Woodward, the British Olympic Association's director of elite performance, is to take a leading role in trying to raise standards among the country's elite shooters after the sport failed to win a single British medal at the Athens and Beijing Olympics.

It has since paid the price by having its pre-2012 funding allocation cut by a massive 76 per cent, leaving it with just £1.25 million to pay for its entire elite programme over the next four years.

To balance the books, British Shooting has had to part company with performance director John Leighton-Dyson and to reduce the number of funded competitors from 46 to five.

Woodward, 53, will work closely with British Shooting's two remaining full-time coaches as part of his 'Olympic coaching programme' - a system he has devised that aims to improve the skills of coaches by giving them access to experts from other fields. A BOA spokeswoman said shooting would now become his "primary role".

Woodward had to abandon plans for a costly Olympic coaching academy after failing to secure the necessary private sponsorship but will now take a hands-on role trying to improve the performance of one or two of the country's least successful Olympic sports.