UK Athletics cuts 18 funded athletes after sponsor walks away and £3.6m loss

UK Athletics will remove 18 athletes from its funded programme next year after reporting a loss of £3.6m for the 12 months to March and the loss of its principal commercial sponsor, which declined to renew a deal worth £2.5m a year when it expired in September.

The governing body confirmed on Monday that its World Class Programme, which provides funded training places and medical support to athletes with a realistic chance of winning major championship medals, will be reduced from 74 to 56 places for the 2027 season. The cuts fall most heavily on throwing events, race walking and the men’s 400m, where no athlete will be funded for the first time since the programme was created.

The decision follows a second consecutive year of losses, which UKA attributed to a fall in income from the Diamond League meeting in London, legal costs relating to a long-running dispute with a former employee, and the sponsor’s departure. The body’s reserves fell to £1.9m, the lowest in its history.

“This is not a decision anyone at UK Athletics wanted to make,” said its chief executive, Jonathan Pell. “It is a decision we are making so that the programme we have can be funded properly rather than spread so thin that it supports nobody. We have been honest with athletes about where we are. Some of the conversations have been very hard.”

Athletes removed from the programme will receive six months of transitional support but will lose their annual award, which ranges from £15,000 to £28,000, and access to UKA’s medical and physiotherapy provision. Several have said publicly that they will be unable to continue in the sport full-time.

“I was told on Friday in a 12-minute phone call,” said Daniel Ekwueme, 27, a hammer thrower from Croydon who finished eighth at the world championships last year and who will lose his place. “I have given 10 years to this. I am ranked in the top 10 in the world. The reason I am being cut is not that I am not good enough. It is that someone in an office could not keep a sponsor.”

UK Sport, which provides the bulk of UKA’s funding from the National Lottery, said the governing body’s grant of £22m over the Olympic cycle was unchanged and that it was “monitoring the situation closely”. A spokesperson said the agency expected UKA to “demonstrate a credible path to financial stability” before the next funding review in 2027.

The British Athletes’ Commission, which represents funded athletes, said it would seek an urgent meeting with Pell and the UKA board. Its chair said the cuts had been “announced to athletes before they were explained to them, which is the wrong way round”. UKA said it would hold an open call for athletes on Thursday.

The body is understood to be in talks with two potential sponsors, one a retail bank and one a sportswear brand, but neither is expected to match the value of the departed deal. Pell said he was “confident” a replacement would be found by the spring. Ekwueme, asked whether that would help him, said: “It might help whoever is on the programme in 2028. It does not help me.