Five sports secure elite funding ahead of Tokyo 2020

Five sports have secured additional funding towards their high-performance programmes ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Elite funding agency UK Sport will invest up to £325,000 to support the GB women’s basketball team – in the hope that the team will qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Team GB is set to travel to China in February for an Olympic qualification tournament, where it will face Spain, China and South Korea.

The additional investment – which follows a £75,000 Aspiration Fund grant handed to the British Basketball Federation in 2018 – will be released in two stages. The first stage has been released to support the squad in China with the second instalment held back for use should the team qualify for the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

The other four sports to benefit from the latest funding round are archery, fencing, skateboarding and wheelchair fencing.

The quartet is set to share a total investment of £279,243.

After winning World Championship Bronze, the GB women’s archery team will benefit from an increased investment of £195,379.

Both fencing and wheelchair fencing have also demonstrated strong potential in 2019, resulting in fencing receiving an increase of £57,264 to take their investment to £144,264.

The wheelchair fencing programme will receive a small increase in funding to allow them to support all three Epee athletes in the team event.

Meanwhile, Skateboard GB has been awarded a further £26,600 to support the team’s ongoing preparation for Tokyo.

“The additional investments we are announcing today are all about further maximising Tokyo medal potential following some strong performances in 2019 across a number of our summer sports," said Chelsea Warr, Director of Performance at UK Sport.

“Our aim in Tokyo is to deliver ‘medals and more’; to continue to stay in the upper echelons of the medal table and to inspire the nation through incredible medal-winning moments, taking the public along with us on this Great British success story.

"Equally important to us is the ability to deliver repeatable success over the long term. Our additional investments in archery, fencing, wheelchair fencing and skateboarding are great examples of this as we continue to win global medals in an ever wider range of sports."