Marcus Ellis: Badminton funding cut 'gives young players no chance'

UK Sport's decision to withdraw all funding from badminton will give "no chance at all" to young players hoping to make a career in the sport, says Olympic bronze medallist Marcus Ellis.

Huddersfield-born Ellis, 27, was part of Great Britain's first men's doubles medal-winning partnership at Rio 2016, along with Chris Langridge.

However, UK Sport named it as one of five sports to lose financial support.

"I'm quite scared for our future," Ellis told BBC Look East.

"People coming up, wanting to have a good career in badminton, who are 16, 17, 18 years old and just starting out, without this funding, they have no chance at all.

Speaking at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes, the world number 20 continued: "The Athlete Personal Award funding goes a long way to helping me play every single day, it's not the money for myself.

"It pays for the programme, the shuttlecocks, the courts - so it won't just be me that is affected.

"It's the people coming up, wanting to get involved, without this funding effectively they have no chance at all to make it."

Archery, fencing, weightlifting and wheelchair rugby have also lost their funding.

However, the next step for badminton will be to appeal and fight the decision, something Ellis says is down to the sport's administrators.

"It's not the players' role that we can get involved. We've got a fantastic support term who will fight to the very end, we've got faith in our support team," he added.

"We have faith in our chief executive and our performance director have got what it takes to get this decision turned around in our favour."