Handball, shooting, boxing and swimming have all expressed their delight at how much money they are to be given, in cases like handball for the first time. Even sports like athletics and rowing, which have received relatively minor increases, have welcomed the promise of extra funding to help them reach their targets.

 

The Performance Director of the Great Britain Target Shooting Federation John Leighton-Dyson described the £4.8 million they had received as a “fantastic boost” for British shooters and for the nation’s medal hopes in Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

 

“Shooting in this country has never had this level of resource before,” he said.  “It means that we can support our top shooters and develop new talent for the future. Shooting has consistently delivered medals for Great Britain and now with this level of funding we can be optimistic about meeting our medal targets.

“It means that with the proper resources our shooters can devote the time which is necessary to compete at Olympic level. It is a fantastic boost for us.

“After the four home nations won 27 shooting medals in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games this caps a great few weeks for shooting in Great Britain. We will now be in the best possible position to prepare for London 2012.”

 

Handball is among five sports receiving funding for the first time in its history. They have been given £2.8 million to bring the sport from almost nowhere to being good enough to compete with the world’s top 12 by the time of 2012.

 

“To compete with 12 nations is realistic in the future, but we are not competing at all at the moment,” said Stevie Neilson, the chairman of the British Handball Association.

 

“The key thing for us is we have huge support in the international community to make handball a high-level game here.

 

“We are delighted with the funding, but the hard work starts here. We have to build a structure in common with other sports that have already got a funding programme in place. We are coming from a small base (600 registered members) but the key thing is to identify the talent. We now know we have got the funds to deliver the best talent we can.”

 

Boxing did better than almost any other sport, receiving £4.6 million – an incredible 337 per cent increase on its previous award. “This is a landmark for amateur boxing,” said Terry Edwards, performance director of the Amateur Boxing Association. “It will enable us, with a very talented young group of boxers, to build on a very robust and vibrant programme up to 2012 and beyond.

 

“We proved in the recent Commonwealth Games that we have the talent. Now we have to work on their experience and maturity. We are very happy with the level of funding we have received. Percentage-wise, we have fared very well.”

 

Athletics, already among the best funded sports in the country, received an increase of only £485,000. “This represents a seven per cent increase on our existing award, and a 2.8 per cent share of the additional funds distributed amongst the 27 sports,” said Dave Collins, UK Athletics performance director.

“This additional funding will help us in ensuring we leave no stone unturned in our quest to achieve the performance targets we’ve set ourselves. As with any sport, we would always like more but now is time to focus on the job in hand.

“We will be working through this information with UK Sport over the next few weeks to fully understand the implications and benefits that this will bring to athletics.”

 

Aquatics will benefit from additional investment of over £4.3 million in the run up to the Beijing Olympics. Swimming will receive £16.6 million funding for the period 2006 to 2009, an increase of £4.3 million, while diving has been awarded an additional £591,000 to bring total Lottery investment for the same period to £4.5 million. Water Polo investment has risen by £1.8 million to a total of £3.1 million while synchronised swimming will receive an extra £1.4 million giving a total of £1.6 million over the three-year period.

 

“We welcome this additional funding and pays tribute to the work which UK Sport has done to secure this vital injection of funds,” said David Sparkes, chief executive of British Swimming.

“This extra support will now enable us to prepare for the Beijing Olympics and begin to lay foundations for success in 2012. We need to build on successes across all disciplines at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and that will be our next challenge now funding is secure.”

 

Rowing, one of Britain’s most successful sports at recent Olympics, received an additional eight per cent, taking its total funding to £20 million per year. “It will have a good ‘top-up’ impact,” said David Tanner, the performance director of the Amateur Rowing Association.

 

“In rowing, we are well-resourced - some might say we have earned it - but we are delighted to have a top-up.

 

“It is a significant sum of money and we will have to look at how we are going to use it. Our medal target for Beijing is three medals, as it was for Sydney (GB won three) and Athens (GB won four). When you consider that the biggest number of medals won by any nation in Athens was four, we are delivering what we are capable of.”