Should national sports funding reward participation growth as much as medal results?

Participation already has its funding streams: school PE budgets, public health grants, community recreation departments, and lottery-funded grassroots programs. Routing elite sports money toward the same goal double counts what other budgets already buy, while starving the one thing only national funding can do, which is produce world-class athletes. Nobody asks the health department to fund Olympic training centers; the sports budget should not be asked to fund what the health department already covers. The existing consultation data showed even sector stakeholders split on this, with most backing elite focus for elite money. Keep the streams separate and judge each on its own results instead of blurring every budget into everything.