UK Athletics put funded stars on notice in race to Paris Olympics

UK Athletics is ready to tighten its selection policy in a bid for Olympic glory, with chief executive Jack Buckner acknowledging the need to "really focus on the big hitters".

Fifteen athletes, including Leeds’ Olympic 800m finalist Alex Bell, were awarded the highest level of funding in the 2022/23 cohort in November, while a further 23, including multiple British shot putt champion and Tokyo Olympian Scott Lincoln of York, were given the second tier of support, known as the Olympic podium potential.

While not going into details about numbers, Buckner has admitted that UKA could cut the number of funded athletes and team numbers as he looks for improved results following a disappointing 2020 Games.

Team GB failed to win an Olympic track and field gold at Tokyo for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Former British Swimming CEO Buckner wants athletics to follow success in the pool and become more ruthless ahead of the summer's World Championships in Budapest and next year's Games in Paris, having felt athletics has become too soft.

“Yeah, I think we are," he said, ahead of the start of the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul on Thursday.

"Already there will be a bit of a shift in our selection philosophy which is going to be quite hard in some ways. Potentially there will be fewer athletes funded.

"We will be moving towards more around the Olympics selection philosophy, more about that performance mentality.

"In the Olympics and the World Championships there will be smaller teams to create a better understanding where the opportunities lie.

"I think that will help. It is a tricky balance to get right."

Buckner was chief executive at British Swimming for five years which culminated with a historic Tokyo Olympics.

Team GB won eight swimming medals in Japan - four golds, three silvers and a bronze - and it was the first time in 113 years GB claimed four swimming golds at one Games.

Buckner added: "You need to really focus on the big hitters. If you look at swimming, there were six-10 people – like Adam Peaty, Duncan Scott, James Guy, Tom Dean, Freya Anderson – but what we were very good at was maximising the talent we had.

"That’s what we (athletics) need to do. We could have a list of six-10 names and we need to be all over them.

“It’s quite hard because athletics has a tradition as being slightly more egalitarian.

"What we were like in swimming was we were a little bit more ruthless about who is going to deliver for you. We need to be a bit tougher around that. The relays are key, we did that in swimming.

"We need to identify where the medals are coming from and have the right resources in place."

Those big hitters would be the likes of Keely Hodgkinson, the Lancashire-born Leeds Beckett University student who continued her scintillating form at the World Indoor Tour final in Birmingham on Saturday, ahead of representing Great Britain at the European Indoor Championships this week.

For the likes of Bell and Lincoln, who both toiled for years to get recognition but nevertheless qualified for the Tokyo Olympics without being fully funded, it potentially makes their path back to the Olympics in Paris next summer, that little bit more difficult.