Jess Pugh: Save my Olympic dream
With a European junior title already on her CV, Shropshire badminton star Jess Pugh is tipped for future Olympic success – but she admits her dreams are on hold as GB Badminton awaits the result of an appeal against its loss of UK Sport funding.
Having exceeded the targets set by UK Sport ahead of last summer's Games – thanks to the bronze medal won by Chris Langridge and Marcus Ellis – the sport was dealt a blow when their financial support for the next cycle was withdrawn in December.
After London 2012, badminton had its investment cut from £7.4m to £5.9m, and will currently not receive a penny of the £345m of National Lottery and government funding that UK Sport will invest in Olympic sports during the next cycle.
That comes despite GB Badminton believing more medals are on the agenda in four years' time, as well as at upcoming World Championships and Superseries Finals.
Confident
Pugh and mixed doubles partner Ben Lane are anticipated to follow in the footsteps of Olympic silver medallists Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms, and World Superseries champions Chris and Gabby Adcock, in becoming world beaters – and she is only too confident that medals are on the agenda in the years to come.
"As an athlete you think about that every day when you're training, you have a hard session and it hurts a lot, but all you think is 'I want that Olympic medal'," said the 19-year-old from Telford, who has been training full time at the Milton Keynes National Badminton Centre for the last 18 months.
"That's what every athlete devotes their life to, all the sacrifices you make – the medal is the dream.
"It's a goose bumps moment when you think about standing on the podium at the Olympics.
"From the improvements we made in Rio, it just shows the talent of the squad. It's a very young squad.
"All those players have a great chance of going for success in Tokyo – what we've achieved in Rio can only get better in Tokyo, with four years of training on top of a talented squad already winning at that level, it's only going to get better."
On February 6, GB Badminton will put forward its case for the reinstatement of funding when they present their evidence to UK Sport, with a response expected by early March.
And with the team's Olympic success still fresh in the mind, former Charlton School pupil Pugh is hopeful the appeal will be successful for the sake of future stars.
"We've got a lot of youngsters coming through who are winning tournaments worldwide and we've seen huge improvements in the last four to eight years, and it's only going to get better," she said. "These talented players deserve the opportunity that previous generations have had.
"You can only win 15 medals in badminton at the Olympics, and we won one of them
."
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