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UK Athletics head coach Charles van Commenee has appointed former Commonwealth champion Bob Weir to oversee the shot, discus and hammer throws leading into the 2012 London Olympics.

Weird won Commonwealth titles in both the hammer in (1982) and the discus (1998) and has been coaching in the US for 20 years.

The 47-year-old represented Great Britain at the Olympics in 1984 and 1996 and captained the team in 2000.

He will join before the New Year from Stanford University, where he has been in charge of the men's track and field programme for several years.

The news came after The Guardian reported that UK Athletics escaped a funding cut despite falling short of their Beijing Olympics medals target.

Cycling, with eight gold medals for Team GB, and swimming, where Rebecca Adlington won two golds and set a world record, were rewarded for their successes with funding increases.

In the four years leading up to Beijing, athletics received £26.5 million yet it managed only four medals, with Christine Ohuruogu, in the women's 400 metres, winning the only gold.

UK Sport, the distributor of national lottery funding, had targeted five for the premier Olympic sport but, despite the shortfall, the expected cut never came.

EFE / Eurosport