Olympics Minister: Maintaining Sports Funding Is 'Top Priority' For Hugh Robertson

Inspire A Generation? Minister Promises To Prioritise Sports Funding

Olympics minister Hugh Robertson promised that maintaining funding for elite sport will be his top priority, after the record-breaking performance of Team GB - but is not guaranteed.

"We have gone past the 19 golds we won in Beijing and there are more real gold medal prospects coming up in the rest of the week," Robertson said.

"I am pretty confident that we can maintain the funding at the current level and that is what I am going to do my utmost to achieve."

Sir Chris Hoy has taken home a sixth gold medal

"Is it an absolute guarantee? No it isn't, but we are going to do everything we possibly can to make sure that will be the case."

But the government has been accused of wavering on the London 2012 promise to inspire generation, after it emerged on Monday that more than 20 schools are to lose their playing fields, with the Coalition approving selling the green spaces.

The shocking statistics were revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by the Guardian and offered an explanation for culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's musings on Monday that school sports provision is "patchy".

The news of the sell-off contradicts a pledge by the Coalition to protect school playing fields. It had said it would "support the creation of an annual Olympic-style schools sport event to encourage competitive sport in schools, and we will seek to protect school playing fields".

Britain is currently enjoying its best Olympic performance for more than a century, after Sir Chris Hoy's historic sixth gold.

The track cyclist's win at the Velodrome means he has more golds than any other British Olympian. Sir Steve Redgrave has five.

Team GB's medal tally is 48 - 22 gold, 13 silver and 13 bronze - making it the most successful Games since the London Olympics of 1908.

Sir Chris, 36, said: "It's the most incredible feeling when you finally cross the line and you realise you've won.

"This is the perfect end to my Olympic career. I look back four Games ago to Sydney and I was just over the moon to have a silver medal.

"If I'd stopped then I'd have been a happy boy but to have gone to Athens, Beijing and to here, I can't put into words what it means."

His victory in the men's keirin came shortly after the new star of women's cycling, Laura Trott, 20, won her second gold of the Games in the women's omnium.

An ecstatic Trott joined an elite club of British women to have won double gold at a single Games, including Dame Kelly Holmes and Rebecca Adlington.

She said: "I can't believe this is happening to me, I really can't. I am so happy."

The double Olympic champion only took up cycling because of poor health after being born with a collapsed lung and diagnosed with asthma.

Referring to her team-mates, some of whom were her childhood heroes, she added: "I never actually believed I would be in the same team as them."

One of Trott's heroes, Victoria Pendleton, could only manage a silver in her sprint showdown with Australian arch-rival Anna Meares.

The 31-year-old said: "I've been a bit overwhelmed with emotion.

"I would have loved to have won on my final race but I'm just so glad that's it all done and I can move on."

Elsewhere, Alistair Brownlee was victorious in the triathlon, ahead of his brother Jonny, who won bronze, while the dressage team also secured gold.

There was an unexpected bronze for Londoner Robbie Grabarz in the high jump, and a silver for Nick Dempsey, competing in men's windsurfing in Weymouth.

The medal haul will rise further with guaranteed medals for Team GB in the boxing, and podium potential today for Nick Skelton in the individual jumping equestrian event.

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