Extra £29m for London 2012 to help reduce funding gap

The extra cash, announced by culture secretary Andy Burnham to UK Sport's board, means the shortfall for the run-up to the London 2012 Games is £50million rather than £79million.

The figure is expected to be confirmed by the Government later, but the move will lessen the impact of the cuts to be made by UK Sport.

The Olympic sports will be told tomorrow if they are to have cuts in their funding.

Burnham admitted the changed economic circumstances had been a factor in the amount of funding offered.

"Since the end of the Beijing Games the world has changed somewhat.

"The global economy has changed significantly and the job I faced was to give sport certainty in this era.

"People can get on now and build for London."

The funding gap arose after the Government's plan of attracting private sector investment failed to bring in any money at all.

Both the British Olympic Association and the shadow Olympics minister Hugh Robertson have called on the Government to honour their original commitment to £100million a year for Olympic sports.

The extra £29million means that £40million more will be spent overall up to London than was done in the run-up to Beijing, where the British team finished fourth in the medals table.

Burnham insists no sport "will be cut adrift" despite the funding shortfall.

Instead, he says those sports that are in an embryonic stage - and thus not a medal hope in London - will still be backed to be used as a launchpad for beyond 2012.

The destination of the funding will now be handled by UK Sport and Burnham told BBC Radio Five Live: "It's right that the politician's job ends here.

"I've got to deliver an overall funding package and set a broad direction but it is now for the experts to take difficult but realistic decisions sport by sport about where our medal potential lies.

"We all got a huge lift in the summer and though they didn't get the credit at the time, a lot of that was down to UK Sport.

"They have done a tremendous job over many years building an elite sports system in this country which truly is world class.

"Now it is for me to get out of their way, let them make those difficult calls but we are saying no sport will be cut adrift.

"(For) some of the sports in more of a developmental stage we are going to identify a way forward so they can really use London to act as a springboard for more success."