Funding for British sport at the Olympics is pretty cut-throat. If your sport is unlikely to get a medal, you are likely to get nothing from UK Sport.  So 1st to 3rd means money, 4th or below means none. This has been a spectacularly successful policy in terms of medal results, though controversial in wider terms of how it relates to levels of participation in sports, how the individual sports can develop sustainably, and how broad the funding should be in this all-or-none system.

Funding research

The situation is a little similar for how research is funded at UK universities…