The decision to "strip several sports of their Olympic and Paralympic funding split the UK Sport board," according to Ben Rumsby of the London TELEGRAPH. The "biggest revolt against Great Britain’s medal-winning formula was given more ammunition after the vote to remove exchequer and National Lottery support from five sports in the build-up to Tokyo 2020 was shown not to be unanimous." The "revelation" follows the publication last week of the minutes of the December UK Sport board meeting at which the decision was taken and "which also saw one of the eight members present refuse to sign off" a near £10M ($12.5M) increase in the grant to the English Institute of Sport, which provides science, medical and technical support to publicly-funded athletes. All this comes ahead of formal representations by archery, badminton, fencing, weightlifting and wheelchair basketball "against the withdrawal of their UK Sport funding," which will be heard on Monday and Tuesday. The "cutting adrift" of wheelchair rugby has already been condemned by UK Athletics Chair Ed Warner, the first time one of the big winners of UK Sport’s "no-compromise" model has spoken out publicly on behalf of one of the losers. There has been pressure put on Rugby Football Union to "absorb the costs of running wheelchair rugby, for which it already provides some support" (TELEGRAPH, 2/4). SKY SPORTS' Andy Charles reported each of the affected sports "has appealed." Badminton's case is "expected to be one of the strongest" as the team came back from Rio 2016 with a medal, as Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge secured a Bronze in the men's doubles competition. Badminton had already received a funding cut from £7.4M to £5.9M for the four years after London 2012, when the sport "provided no medals" (SKY SPORTS, 2/5).
