Incoming UK Sport chair, Dame Katherine Grainger, has warned against diluting the funding agency's 'no compromise' approach as it would result in a slide down the medal table for Great Britain.
Grainger starts work at UK Sport next week, having retired from rowing after winning a fourth Olympic silver at Rio 2016 to go along with the gold she claimed at London 2012.
But the 41-year-old Scot joins the agency at a pivotal time in its 20-year history, after months of negative headlines about athlete welfare in some of Britain's leading sports and growing calls for a rethink about how UK Sport shares out its money.
Speaking to the BBC in her first interview since taking the job in April, Grainger said: "There's a big argument that [UK Sport's funding model] is too narrow-focused but if you look at the success in Rio, we got more medals across more sports than we've done before. And we got more than any other nation in the world.
"Our actual breadth of success is growing all the time, so it's not fair to say that we're narrowly focusing on a few sports.
"What is fair to say is that our money is finite and it's not stretching. The irony is that as more sports are more successful, the money can't go as far."
Grainger's comments came as 11 unfunded sports -- including badminton, wheelchair rugby and weightlifting -- issued a joint call for an "urgent, thorough review" of UK Sport's strategy, with a main demand that all sports be given a base level of support.
The six-time world champion, who also has a PhD in law, said she had some sympathy with this stance and understands the passion of those who have seen their funding cut.
But she added a cautionary tale from her own athletic career. "I started rowing at a time when we kept our boats on scaffolding poles under a bridge -- we didn't have the set-up we have now. The facilities have been transformed," she said, remembering the pre-lottery days when Team GB finished 36th in the Atlanta 1996 medal table.
"So you look at not just the medal success but at the level of support we have, the coaches, the training camps. I don't think many athletes would like that to slip back to a stage where we just wouldn't be competitive internationally."
Now one of the most powerful women in British sport, she said there would be a review of UK Sport's approach, as there was in 2014 and several times before, but it "won't happen instantly" as the major stakeholders have committed to the current four-year cycle.
She believes one of the big challenges facing British Olympic and Paralympic sport is weaning itself off its dependence on revenues from the National Lottery, which have been topped up in recent years by Exchequer funding.
"UK Sport has been very well supported by the government and National Lottery for a long time, that's why we've seen such success," she said. "But everyone is aware that we can't continue to rely on those sources to the extent we have done up until now."
Grainger said all of British sport -- including the British Olympic Association, British Paralympic Association and national governing bodies -- must be "much more creative" about where to find the money to maintain the country's hard-earned, new status as a sporting superpower.
With National Lottery sales declining and the UK government unlikely to extend Exchequer support after Tokyo 2020, Grainger said nobody is hiding from the fact that UK Sport's pot of cash could get much smaller.
Unless alternative revenues can be found - and there are several ideas circulating within sport to pool marketing rights, create new events for broadcasters and sponsors and share back-office costs -- Grainger and her team will be faced with even tougher decisions about who to fund and where to make cuts.