The world of the elite athlete has changed dramatically in recent years, with most top level competitors leading the lives of professional sportsmen and women, even if they are not yet receiving the multi-million pound salaries that some of the world's top sports stars can command.

If you can remember the UK winter sports stars of 25 years ago, you will recall a handful of ambitious athletes making the best of largely inadequate training facilities, with the support of minimal back-up teams and surviving on shoe-string budgets. Some were lucky enough to be supported by equipment sponsors and, if they were capable, could make the books balance with some revenue for personal appearances. Others were fortunate to come from wealthy families who could back their sporting activities, but that didn't necessarily mean we had the best of British potential representing the country. In some cases it meant we were handing out GB vests and team kit to those who could afford them.

OK perhaps that is a little harsh as there is no doubt that downhill skiers like Graham Bell and Konrad Bartelski were very talented, but British talent was certainly thin on the ground at the time. Following Bartelski's 10 year career in top level skiing, which included a 12th place at the Olympics and an unexpected 2nd place in a World Cup downhill race at Val Gardena, the best ever result for a British downhill skier (even though Konrad actually came from Holland), he went on to a successful career in retail, newspapers and television.

Fortunately things are much better today and not just in winter sports like skiing and snowboarding. Many of the so-called minority sports, with the availability of lottery funding, are able to properly support athletes with Olympic potential as well as providing talent development initiatives to identify and nurture the stars of tomorrow too. British Cycling has two Olympic-class velodrome at its disposal in Manchester and Newport, plus a huge staff of coaches, equipment specialists, mechanics, physiotherapists and administrators. The new lottery cash also provides for a development programme that includes accommodation for athletes in both Manchester and in a European training base in Italy.

In winter sports there is a similar programme in place too. Obviously the facilities required for bobsleigh, biathlon or downhill ski training don't exist in the UK, so much of the money is spent on providing training camps abroad, which during the summer means heading for places like New Zealand and Argentina. There are also youth development initiatives too that will ensure Team GB identifies and developes new talent as early as possible and puts in place the necessary coaching infrastructure to give us the best chance of Olympic champions in the future. Obviously we can't send every budding teenager to the French Alps for the whole winter, especially when education and home life are equally important at that time in their lives, so that is when new training alternatives are called into play. The UK now has 6 state of the art indoor real snow winter sports centres. These are huge indoor facilities that utilise the very latest in snow generation technology to provide slopes of real snow for skiers and snowboarders to use. At the moment the slopes in these centres are all around the same length at just over 150 metres, but there are plans for new centres with longer slopes. Whether these will be built remains to be seen, as history is littered with cases of ambitious snow complex plans that failed to find the right funding to allow them to succeed.

At the moment we need to make best use of those centres that we have and with sports like freestyle snowboarding currently thriving in the various locations, the future of the sport looks very good indeed. The British Ski and Snowboard Federation already supports several squads including a 9 member snowboard cross team that includes medal hope Zoe Gillings, a 13 member freestyle snowboard team and a 9 member junior snowboard squad. Also there is a World Cup half pipe team of 5 that includes the experienced Leslie McKenna and Ben Kilner. We currently have just one athlete on the Parallel Giant Slalom event team, Adam Mcleish who resides and trains in Quebec, Canada.

So with new investment, new indoor training centres and a whole new backup and coaching structure in place, the Olympic winter champions of the future stand a much better chance of coming from Great Britain than they ever did before.