GB team look to repay funding faith with London medals haul

UK Sport have set 
ParalympicsGB the minimum target of winning 103 medals from at least 12 different sports, with the overall goal of once again finishing second in the medal table.

Britain won 102 medals, including 42 golds, in Beijing four years ago to claim second place for a third consecutive Paralympic Games.

ParalympicsGB’s campaign has been backed financially to the tune of more than £49m of funding over the last four years, with money being distributed to 18 different sports.

Hunter acknowledges how the funding underpins the continued competitiveness of the British team.

However, with funding comes not only expectation but also targets which will in turn help define future support.

Hunter said: “We would certainly not be able to be competing at the level we are without that support and we are extremely grateful that with that support and with other organisations that have come in to help us in all sorts of ways the team is absolutely best prepared.

“One of the things we pushed for is parity of funding of Olympics and Paralympic sport so absolutely the model needed to be consistent.

“We are hopeful that all our sports will come through and will beat their medal targets and performance targets and the funding will come their way.

“But let’s not focus on funding at the moment the important thing for us absolutely is the opening ceremony on Wednesday and then 11 days of outstanding competition and everybody getting behind our team and making sure we win plenty of medals.”

He added: “We have got our biggest ever team: 300 athletes competing on behalf of Great Britain which is an amazing achievement by those athletes.

“All of them are absolutely capable of winning medals; the traditional sports of cycling, rowing, swimming, athletics – they are going to be bags full of medals.

“But also ones to watch are things like basketball, rugby – amazingly exciting and powerful sports – and sitting volleyball on the team for the first time. Who knows what they might do? They are certainly inspired to get in there in the medal hunt, we are going to be looking for medals across more sports.

“They are out there to prove some points about how wonderful Paralympic sport really is.”

Hunter revealed that an Olympics highlights show had been shown to the athletes to inspire them to deliver their own heroics at the London 2012 Paralympics.

“The mood in the camp is one of excitement and anticipation,” said Hunter.