The 400m wunderkind Matthew Hudson-Smith, who anchored the English relay team to Commonwealth Games gold and took individual silver at the European Championships in his debut season, is among a new wave of British athletics talent set to be rewarded with lottery funding for the first time on Monday.
Other stars of the summer – including the Commonwealth and European 800m silver medallist, Lynsey Sharp, who made the podium in Glasgow despite being sick the night before the final and the 21-year-old sprinter Jodie Williams, who returned from serious injury to win four medals in Glasgow and Zurich – are expected to have their funding upgraded when British Athletics announces who will receive lottery money for 2015 this afternoon. However, the 41-year-old Jo Pavey, who followed up a shock 5,000m bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games with gold in the 10,000m at the European Championships in August shortly after the birth of her second child, is not expected to be funded again after falling off the list in 2013 because of the more stringent requirements laid down by British Athletics after London 2012.
British Athletics requires that any athlete given “podium funding” – worth up to £27,737 to a potential Olympic or Paralympic medallist and £20,804 to a world-level finalist, plus coaching and medical support – must be considered capable of reaching the podium at Rio 2016. Pavey, for all her brilliance this season, is unlikely to reach such heights given that she will be nearly 43 when the next Olympics comes round. This year, for instance, she was ranked 18th in the world over 5,000m and 47th in the 10,000m.
In previous years, announcements about athlete funding have mostly concentrated attention on those missing out. Last year it was the former world triple-jump champion Phillips Idowu; in 2012 it was the world marathon record-holder Paula Radcliffe. But it is not thought there will be a dramatic culling of athletes whose careers may have peaked. Instead the focus will be largely on rewarding those who helped Britain win 23 medals, including 12 golds, at the European Championships in August – the nation’s greatest performance at the event.
That means several young athletes on lower-grade “podium potential” funding – granted to developmental stars who are considered to have the ability to win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 – will be upgraded to full podium funding.
They are expected to include not only Sharp and Williams but also the world indoor 60m champion, Richard Kilty, who ran so brilliantly around the final bend as Britain won European 4x100m gold in Zurich, and the 20-year-old Chijindu Ujah who showed his enormous potential by dipping under the 10-second barrier for 100m when running 9.96 sec in June.
Hudson-Smith, also 20, is set to be funded for the first time after coming from nowhere to be ranked among the world’s fastest 400m runners. He took up the event only this year and he quickly cut four seconds off his personal best before breaking the 45-second barrier in his sixth race and then running 44.75 sec in Zurich. No wonder the Olympic champion, Kirani James, predicts that Hudson-Smith is “capable of great things as long as he keeps on the right track”.
Another athlete expected to join Hudson-Smith on the funding list for the first time is the 14-year-old Paralympian sprinter Maria Lyle who set a T35 200m world record of 31.01 sec – smashing the previous best by over a second – on her international debut in February.
Lyle, who has cerebral palsy, went on to win double T35 100m and 200m gold at the IPC European athletics championships in Swansea in August.
