WILTSHIRE-based athletics coach Malcolm Arnold insists British Athletics needs to look beyond the glittering headlines after the withdrawal of funding from Bath’s high performance centre made him redundant over the Christmas period.

Broughton Gifford-based hurdles specialist Arnold, who coached the likes of Colin Jackson and Dai Greene to world titles and helped athletes amass more than 70 major medals over a 46-year coaching career, was left out of work alongside high performance coach James Hillier after British Athletics decided against continuing to fund the Bath base.

The 76 year old, who may now retire, and Hillier guided Emily Diamond and Eilidh Doyle to Olympic bronze medals in the 4x400m relay in the recent Rio Games, having led the establishment of the UKA Regional Centre at Bath in 1999, to which the likes of Jackson moved to train.

Regarded as one of the leading hurdles coaches in the world, was appointed lead hurdles coach based at Bath in 2013, but the university-based set-up may now be disbanded after funding was pulled.

Arnold, who was appointed an OBE for his services to athletics in 2012, fears a failure to continue developing world-class coaches is being obscured by a few notable British athletics successes, with some of Great Britain’s top names such as heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson and sprinter Adam Gemili choosing to follow distance champion Mo Farah in moving their training abroad.

“It’s disappointing,” Arnold told the Times. “It’s down to the new strategy of British Athletics, but exactly what this strategy is has not been explained to us.

“It seems that they’re not too bothered particularly about developing athletes for the future, and people are wondering what the hell is going on.

“People are (only) looking at the big headlines. Yes, we made our medal target (in Rio) but the underlying problems are not being looked at.

“If you go back to 2014, the impression was that we had a wonderful European Championships, but if you consider the demise of Germany and Russia, we didn’t. The sprinters did a wonderful job, but in some field events, we didn’t even have any entries, let alone medals.

“We’re winning as many medals now as we were in 1997, having received £80 million (in funding) since then. The World Championships next year will go off, but who are they going to showcase? Mo is on his last legs, Jessica Ennis-Hill has retired, and Katarina Johnson-Thompson is not fulfilling her promise.”

He added: “We were doing better when we were skint. I wonder where the next superstars are coming from. If you look at the neglect of development of athletes, the neglect of development of coaches — which is a subject really close to my heart — people are asking if it’s a showbusiness company or something that develops athletes.

“If you look at our Olympic team and you note how many train (at the British Athletics high performance institute) in Loughborough and how many train in other places, and how many train abroad — and they’re the successful athletes — it’s not a good indictment on British Athletics.”

Athletes based at Bath have won around 50 major medals, including Jason Gardener’s 4x100m relay gold medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004.