BADMINTONENGLAND has just started looking for a new performance director to take the sport through to London 2012, with chief executive Adrian Christy hoping to appoint before the year's end.

 

And while top quality British coaches such as Andy Wood and Ian Wright can certainly not be ruled out, there is a strong possibility that the person who ends up at the top of the tree by Christmas will be from overseas, drawn to this country not by reindeer but a secure financial deal.

 

A salary likely to be around £75,000 per annum may not look huge to some sports, but it will provide a healthy enough living for whoever is charged with meeting the soaring home expectation that will accompany the next Olympic Games.

 

Perhaps that challenge will be enough to tempt the departing Danish head coach, Steen Pedersen, or his compatriot Morten Frost, four times All England champion, who is now coaching Denmark's Peter Gader.

 

Should Christy choose to import from abroad, he will be following in a well established tradition within domestic badminton, which has previously employed former Olympic champions such as Park Joo Bong of Korea and Rexy Mainaky of Indonesia, and which currently includes Malaysia's Tan Kim Her, China's Lu Jian and Chinese-born Yvette Yun Luo on its coaching roster.

 

The new role will fill a gap left two years ago by the departure of Denmark's Finn Traerup.

 

He, meanwhile, is likely to be very interested in the post that Pedersen is leaving.

 

And so the coaching merry-go-round turns…

 

More financial certainty helping recruitment

 

Eight years ago John Stevens, chief executive of the National Coaching Federation, commented on Britain's relatively weak position in terms of attracting top talent.

 

"When you look around the world there are a couple of very obvious distinctions between the most successful countries and us," he said.

 

"The main one would be that the likes of Australia and France have lot of full-time, paid coaches compared to us.

 

"Those nations are ahead of us in creating meaningful careers.'

 

Back in 2000, during the early years of Lottery funding, uncertainty over levels of ticket sales meant that UK Sport only felt confident about committing to annual funding budgets.

 

For the last two Olympic cycles, however, that has not been the case, and the resultant security of tenure which national governing bodies have been able to offer - with funding now based on four-year blocks - has underpinned a migration of talent from foreign fields.

 

As John Coates, president of the Australian Olympic committee, observed only last month: "Britain has really done what we did - we imported 200 foreign coaches between 1980 and 2000."

 

Foreign influence growing

 

Six of the 30 summer Olympic sports and disciplines in Britain currently have performance directors from abroad - with Dutchman Charles van Commenee being the most recent arrival at the flagship of the Games, athletics.

 

But around two-thirds of the sports at which Britain was represented at the Beijing Olympics had at least one foreign coach in a senior position.

 

And although the next cycle of Olympic funding will not start officially until April next year, UK Sport have already released planning figures to allow sports to secure the staff they require looking towards 2012.

 

As the British Olympic Association's chairman Colin Moynihan observed last month during his visit to Australia: "Coaching is critical.

 

"You need the best coaches in the world. You need to plan well in advance.

 

"You need the financing in place.

 

"Strong, secure financing so you can hire those coaches.

 

 "Most of our sports have secured their coaches for the next four years…it's not open season any more."

 

Thus figures such as Jurgen Grobler, the East German who has overseen Britain's rowing endeavours as head coach for the last 16 years, and Jan Bartu, the Czech Olympic silver medallist in charge of Modern Pentathlon since 1998, will continue working towards the London Games four years' hence.

 

It seems virtually certain too that Dave Brailsford, who oversaw the outstanding Olympic performance of Britain's cyclists in Beijing, will be persuaded to stay on as performance director, his restless ambition assuaged by the emerging plans to run a British road racing team at events including the Tour de France.

 

The position in aquatic sports has been, perhaps fittingly, more fluid.

 

Following Bill Sweetenham's return to Australia in 2007 after seven years as British swimming's performance director, the man who shadowed much of his work during that time, Ian Turner, was poached by New Zealand, and the sport confirmed another Australian, Mike Scott, in the post.

 

Scott has recently appointed fellow Aussie Doug Frost, a former coach of Ian Thorpe, to the position as head coach of one of the five national swimming centres at Stirling.

 

Synchronised swimming has welcomed a Canadian, Biz Price, as performance director, while diving has lost the services of Australian Steve Foley, who is now working for the United States.

 

Relaxed attitude from UK Sport

 

"There is no UK Sport policy on coaching which says, 'Thou shalt poach' or ''Thou shalt not poach'," says spokesman Matt Crawcour.

 

"The only consideration is to offer sports the financial support they need to deliver medals.

 

"If some of them decide the necessary expertise needs to be imported, then so be it.

 

"We don't micro-managed the sports, and rightly so, because they are the in the best position to make those kind of decisions."

 

Beyond the transfer talk the overall position remains the same - an elite force of foreign coaches passing on their specialist knowledge in the British cause, and - so UK Sport devoutly hope - preparing a new generation of home coaches to operate at the same level.

 

Figures provided by UK Sport indicate that Britain's total of 47 medals earned in Beijing directly involved 51 different coaches, of whom 40 were British.

 

Put another way, British coaches were behind 78 per cent of the medals total.

 

So while Turner may have been one that got away as far as Britain is concerned, home coaches are clearly more than holding their own in terms of Olympic performance. 

 

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now freelancing and will be writing regularly for insidethegames