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

Every medal starts somewhere unglamorous: a community pool, a school track, a volunteer coach staying late. Team GB's 65 medals at Paris 2024 were the visible tip of a pyramid built in local clubs that elite funding never touches. A medal-only formula slowly starves that base, and then everyone acts surprised when the pipeline narrows a decade later. Weighting participation growth equally is not charity to grassroots sport, it is maintenance on the machine that produces the medals. No base, no pyramid, no podium. Countries that treat community sport as infrastructure keep producing champions; countries that treat it as a luxury good end up buying their medals with ever more expensive elite programs. Fund the roots and the medals take care of themselves. BBC Sport