Simon Timson, performance director of UK Sport, says matching 2012 medal tally in Rio is not sole yardstick Timson, currently head of the England development programme at the England and Wales Cricket Board, will replace Peter Keen in the new year, with the task of following Britain's most successful games in the modern era. Team GB won 65 medals, 29 of them gold, and finished third in the medal table. But he said that having "a few fewer medallists" in 2016 Olympics would not necessarily be an indication of failure, as long as the right structures had been put in place to "hard-wire" this summer's success for future Games. "The mission that we've been charged with here is to build a stronger, more sustainable high-performance system, " he said in an interview with Telegraph Sport. "If we can look back in four years" time and say we have reached down to every athlete that has genuine, evidence-based, medal potential for Rio, and directed the right resources to those athletes, we've succeeded." UK Sport will announce next month the levels of funding that will be awarded to various sports over the next four years. The governing body, which received £312 million of government and lottery money between Beijing 2008 and London 2012, will have its budget maintained for the current four-year cycle leading up to Rio. But in order to maximise their share of the pot, individual sporting bodies will need to demonstrate not just the potential to deliver Olympic medals, but genuine competition for places as well. "Medals and medallists will be one indicator," Timson said. It won't be the sole indicator. Are there obvious routes into high-performance pathways for athletes? Have we got systems and structures that allow athletes to easily access those? Are sports pushing that talent though, increasing competition for places? I think if we're doing all those things, if we have a few fewer medallists in Rio, we've done a pretty damn good job in four years, and will be well set for 2020 and beyond. Another of Timson's priorities will be to reproduce Britain's London success at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. A former bobsledder, he was sporting director of British Skeleton between 2000 and 2006, masterminding a period of success during which this country has won a medal at each of the last three Winter Games, including Amy Williams" gold at Vancouver in 2010.