Olympics-Deep funding cuts for British minority sports

By Martyn Herman

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Minority British sports including shooting, water polo and volleyball will have their funding cut by at least half for the 2012 London Olympics after a 50 million pounds ($70.55 million) government shortfall.

Shooting, which last produced a gold medal for Britain at the 2000 Sydney Games, is worst affected with its funding cut from 5.5 million pounds for last year's Beijing Games to 1.2 million for London.

Water polo has been granted 1.4 million pounds, half its Beijing allocation in the funding announced by UK Sports on Thursday.

"It's pretty bleak," British water polo performance director Nick Hume told the BBC. "We think the absolute cheapest you could do it on would be about 2.5 million."

UK Sports announced in December that more than 125 million pounds would be split between cycling, swimming, rowing, sailing and athletics, the sports mainly responsible for Britain's fourth place in the Beijing medals table.

The global economic downturn resulted in a 100 million pounds shortfall in the 600 million pounds funding package announced by the government in 2006, although it pumped an extra 50 million of public money in before Christmas.

"The past few months have not been easy for anyone, and the decisions we have taken have been tough," Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport, said in a statement.

"But I firmly believe we have done the best we can to deliver for all sports whilst remaining true to our core responsibility of driving medal success, that was seen to deliver so well in Beijing." (Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by John Mehaffey)