In a little over seven months time the world's best athletes will gather in Daegu South Korea for the XIII World Championships and just 12 months before the assumed "great British athletics finale" at the London Olympic Games.

Niels de Vos, UK Athletics chief executive on £192,000 per year, reportedly said recently that he believes Britain can be represented in every event in London,that we will be in 50 per cent of the finals and we can win 10 medals.

However, the statistical event by event survey of British athletes' world rankings from the 2010 season, published daily by www.topsinathletics.com in line with the day by day Olympic programme and together with the Deagu entry qualifications to indicate what might be achieved, suggests nothing of the sort and is even more significant in relation to this year's WorldChampionships.

In considering British athletes performances in 2010 it must be noted that entry standardsfor Deagu - with the Olympics entry standard likely as usual to be identical - must be achieved during the qualification period from  October 1, 2010 (1 January 2010 for the 10,000m, marathon, combined events, race walks and relays) to August 15, 2011.

The last World Championship in Berlin in 2009 resulted in just four individual medalists so it is considerably puzzling to see how UK Athletics can possibly justify lottery funding for 47 individual event athletes deemed "Podium Potential" for Deagu and London when clearly we have nothing like that number capable of getting on the podium? Presumably, UK Athletics is forced to produce this number in order to justify their huge staffing levels and administrative costs?

UK Athletics' record on World Championships achievement so far, comparing the five from 2001 to 2009 contested during their administration, with the previous seven Championships where athletes and coaches had no lottery funding, shows a considerable drop in achievement with only the last two events showing a reasonable improvement on their previous three; but still a long way offwhat was achieved before they took over, as the table shows.

GB Overall team ranking, medals and points

Year	Position	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Points
1983	5th	2	2	3	7	104
1987	4th	1	3	4	8	88
1991	5th	2	2	3	7	76
1993	4th	3	3	4	10	95
1995	4th	1	3	1	5	78.5
1997	4th	1	4	1	6	78.5
1999	4th	1	4	2	7	70
2001	8th	1	0	1	2	58
2003	11th	0	1	2	3	46
2005	14th	1	0	2	3	34
2007	6th	1	1	3	5	61
2009	7th	2	2	2	6	80

Of the points gained for top eight places/finals at the seven World Championships, which took placeunder the old mainly "amateur" system, between 1983 through to 1999, British athletes, who, along with their coaches mostly all had to work for a living, averaged a total of 84.2 points from
each Championship with a high, in 1993 of 95 points and won a total of 50 medals including 11 gold, 21 silver and 18 bronze. But, compared with UK Athletics' period in charge over the next five Championships, performances, even by removing the two highest medals/points championships - 1983 and 1987 - under the former non-lottery funded National Governing Body - still leaves a total of 35 medals won, including eight gold, 10 silver, 15 bronze and an average points score of 79.6. Clearly, a far better achievement than UK Athletics' efforts over their five World Championships.

Their comparative lack of achievement in the World Championships, since the Government funding took over and with the additional benefit of far more sponsorship and TV money than ever before, amounting to some £80 million, is in massive contrast to what has been achieved without them.

Prior to UK Athletics being put in control, British elite athletes had no lottery funding. The previous athletics governing body, the British Athletics Federation (BAF) wasn't awash with money, didn't have a professional staff as UK Athletics now have, numbering some 120 (the largest of any NGB for athletics in the world) nor did they have costly High Performance Centers, (most now closed down because of under use and/or ineffectiveness) plus UK Athletics' own full time paid coaches, specialist department directors and the best possible medical and scientific support staff; all of which should have resulted in the delivery of the sport as originally promised over ten years ago.

Apologists for Uk Athletics will claim, ignoring the fact that the sport has been given millions to do something about it, "the world has moved on," that we have "a missing generation" and "far more countries now take part". But in actuality world top standards have only improved in a few events, notably in the men's' 100 metres and 200m and men's 5,000m and 10,000m, mainly through just two outstanding individuals, Usain Bolt of Jamaica and Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia.

The five World Championships between 2001 and 2009 under UK Athletics' heavily funded responsibility for UK athletics, British athletes in those five World Championships scored an average of 55.8 points and won a total of 19 medals including five gold, four silver and 10 Bronze. All in all aconsiderably way down on the previous - unfunded - five Championships and, more significantly inview of their remit, also way down on UK Athletics' predicted and agreed targets with the Government funders.

When the public has funded a sport like athletics - to the tune of £150 million - they expect results. But from 2001 - by which time and after three years, UK Athletics should have been fully up to speed - through to this last Championship, the overall GB team performances have been very disappointing, with the odd highlight, including Phillips Idowu (pictured) in the triple jump at Berlin in 2009.



Those Championships in the German capital showed an improvement, but it had taken ten years and a major clearout of the previous top management at UK Athletics at considerable cost to the sports potential development and lost opportunities for our undoubted athletics talent. This has been largelydue to the Government's funding agency's failure to officially recognise and deal with UK Athletics' sunderperforming management, their total lack of a comprehensive development strategy and their Coach Education Programme which was deemed "unfit for purpose".

Rather than being carried away with UK Athletics' media department output of hysterically hyped acclamations for mainly mediocre performances to date and future predictions for the next 19 months to London 2012 - the same "false dawns" of hype and spin we've suffered the last ten years - it might be noted that despite some very good British successes in Berlin, Britain gained only one medal more than in Osaka two years ago but finished one place further down the medals/points tables. It should also be noted that Britain's Berlin performances would only have returned two silver medals in Osaka in 2007. This is seen because the World Championships in the year before an Olympic Games is recognised asproducing generally higher standards than the Championship "lull" following the Olympic Games.

What is most significant is that we have been disgracefully unrepresented in most of our endurance and throwing events and depleted in others as, seen by GB's Berlin entry, where no British athlete was entered in 17 of the 47 Championships events and with only one athlete entered in 12 other events. So much for developing the talent pool and raising standards.

However, overall achievements by UK athletes must be measured against the amount of financial investment handed to the National Governing Body for athletics, UKA, Ltd., since 1998.

UK Athletics Ltd., the national governing body for the sport is a private limited company with no shareholders and wholly unelected and unaccountable to the sport has received around £150million pounds of public money from the Government since they were originally set up andfunded by UK Sport - a Government quango - over 12 years ago.

UK Athletics' mission statement was, "to deliver the sport the likes of which has never been seen before." They claimed standards would rise, injuries would be reduced and more medals wouldbe won. Of course we all held our breath and expected wonderful things. That was the promise because the sport, or rather the sport's administration now had plenty of public money to ensure our best development and more medals in global championships than ever before. But, like Napoleon's march on Moscow, things didn't go quite as planned.

The British public - and particularly the Government - is looking to London 2012 as the fulfilment of 14 years of its financial investment and support for the sport at the global level. But what they will reap?

Unless Hugh Robertson, the current Minister for Sport responsible for overseeing UK Sport's funding of UK Athletics, immediately takes a far closer look at how taxpayers and lottery moneyis being spent and demands an objective and independent analysis of what is really happening behind the hype and spin produced by UK Athletics, they will sadly fall very short of what couldhave been possible had this NGB been athlete and coach centered on a performance rewarded basis rather than company management centered on a salary rewarded basis which now exceeds £5.5million per year.

John Bicourt was an English record holder and represented Britain in the 3,000m steeplechase at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. He has coached, advised and managed a number of Olympic and World Championship athletes from Britain, Australia, South African, Kenya and the United States, including medallists and world record holders. He is an elected officer of the Association of British Athletics Clubs