The 36-year-old from Middlesbrough claimed bronze in the javelin F36 event in first Games at the Barcelona 1992 Paralympic before going on to take gold medals at Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004.

Churchill also claimed a bronze in shot put in 1996 and finished in sixth place in javelin at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics but looks set to miss out on London after his event was scraped.

Churchill, nicknamed "Moose", has had a Facebook group launched by friends titled "Get Moose into 2012 Paralympics Games Javelin", but Mike Cavendish, the UK Athletics Paralympic performance programme manager, has written to members of the group explaining the reasons for the decision and warning that it is highly unlikely to get overturned.

"The Paralympic Games has a maximum number of events that can be squeezed into a 10 day athletics programme," Cavendish wrote.

"In the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, this was 160 medal events.

"The commitment for London was between 160 and 170.

"It is simply not possible to exceed this number due to timetabling and sheer number of athletes.

"To put this in context, if all event/class/gender combinations were staged, the IPC would be faced with something like 450 events (possibly more), which as you can imagine, is impossible (bearing in mind the Olympics, which takes place over the same number of days, has around 70)."

Cavendish explained that all events are analysed by the IPC and that Churchill's event simply did not score favourably enough to get onto the 2012 programme."

"As you will know, some events and classes naturally have a much deeper pool of world-class athletes eligible for qualification and subsequent participation in the Paralympics," he said.

"Others are shallower and the IPC are constantly re-shuffling the pack to try and ensure quality of competition, depth, marketability and fairness.

"At the recent World Championships, 200 events were staged (over a slightly longer number of days than is available for the Paralympic Games), and it was always the case that this number would need to be reduced by around 40 for London.

"The IPC did an analysis of the relative strengths of all eligible classes prior to the World Championships, and some 120 medal events were protected for London (i.e. because they were very strong/deep or for reasons associated with the need to develop specific classes).

"The remaining 80 events were then reviewed after the end of the World Championships, and 50 of these were then selected for London.

"All National Paralympic Committees were asked to submit methods by which they believed the final events should be selected - UKA did so via ParalympicsGB.

"It is important to clarify that this was a submission to suggest methods to select events, not actual events themselves - if countries had been asked to suggest events, each country would naturally have just suggested the events in which they are strongest, which wouldn't have helped the IPC to make rational choices.

"The actual method the IPC used to choose the remaining events was based on number of athletes in world rankings (since 2008), number of entries in medal events in Beijing and the World Championships and the relative quality of the eligible competitors (statistical analysis).

"Allowances/adjustments were also then made for classes that are, on the whole, underrepresented currently on the World Stage (such as T/F51, T/F52).

"Unfortunately, Kenny's event of F37/38 Javelin did not score favourably on this analysis in comparison to the other events under consideration.

"On the whole, we agree with the process, as we believe it to be about the only fair and transparent way of making this selection, but in every country, there will be individuals that will have missed out (and Kenny is not alone in the UK)."

Cavendish added that he would have liked to have seen the event at the Games but that it simply was not feasible in light of the IPC ruling.

"If we could guarantee the medal event status of all GB and NI athletes we would, but with every other nation attempting to do the same thing, this is simply not possible," he said.

"For reasons of fairness and equality for all competing nations, there is also no allowance/special dispensation made for Home Games athletes.

"Unfortunately, this decision is now final from the IPC as the events list had to be submitted to LOCOG by mid-April to begin the timetabling/ticketing process."

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