Two figures hit you between the eyes when you enter the reception area of UK Sport's airy headquarters in London's Bloomsbury: 65 and 120. These, posted prominently on the wall, indicate the record number of medals won by Team GB respectively in the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

The perfect riposte, they might argue, to the bitter criticism of the organisation's resolutely hard-line policy of funding only those sports with genuine podium potential.

Any background mood music surely would have to be the triumphalist: We Are The Champions though those now cast into the financial wilderness, like basketball, water polo and synchronised swimming, might find the enduring Queen hit's accompanying refrain No Time for Losers rather more appropriate.

The opprobrium attracted by this "all or nothing" philosophy  has been well-chronicled, not least in  these columns, and even raised in parliament. Now it is will be vigorously defended by UK Sport's chief executive Liz Nicholl, one of its prime architects, at a public forum in Whitehall next week when she gives a keynote speech that will leave the assembled sports and business bigwigs in no doubt that playing hardball with Natonal Lottery cash means that Britain is no longer a nation of plucky losers.

In little over a decade Britain has gone from 36th to third in the Olympics medal table, largely because of the so-called "no compromise" approach that has seen hundreds of millions of pounds pumped into our best medal prospects.

"No compromise," latterly has become the buzzphrase of UK Sport, a well-run body recognised as the sporting arm of Government, with Nicholl, who became its chief executive five years ago, the driving force behind the campaign to win even more medals at the next Olympics, at Rio in 2016, which would make Britain the first nation to do so after hosting a Games.

Arguably Nicholl, not least because of her financial muscle - UK Sport is distributing some £350 million ($579 million/€419 million) in the run-up up to Rio 2016 - is now  the most powerful woman in British sport, displaying a Iron Lady quality in  standing firm against the critics.

I have known and liked Liz Nicholl  for many years, watching her progress from the relatively genteel world of  netball, where she was a Welsh international, to the sharpest end of sports governance.

Unfailingly engaging and approachable, the slim and remarkably youthful-looking 61-year-old seems the least likely to be cast in the  role of a hard-hearted Hannah. But, she argues, hers has been a necessary ruthlessness.

UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl believes the results of Team GB at London 2012 justified her tough "no compromise" approach ©ITG

In an exclusive interview with insidethegames Nicholl spoke of her resolve not only to fully implement UK Sport's funding policies but to fight the corner for more women to be given significantly influential posts in sports administration .

The message to sport's also-rans is clear ."Our remit is to deliver in Olympic and Paralympic success through medals, and that is our focus as an organisation," Nicholl says. "We have been very clear with all the sports about our approach and sit behind all our investment decisions.

"We want to reach down and fund every sport and athlete that has medal potential over an eight year period - until Tokyo 2020 - and that's what we've done. The sports that are disappointed now are sports that we uniquely funded for London but had we not had London they would not have been the recipient of UK Sport funding.

"They had a period of 2006 to 2013 to see what they could do but they weren't able to demonstrate that they could reach the performance standard to put them in a position to access funding from us.

"I completely understand the concerns of those sports having to manage without those resources but it is not as if we changed our approach; this has always been the case.  All sports had a chance to prepare for the possibility that this might happen. Clearly now they will be regrouping and thinking about how they manage and what other resources can be made available."

UK Sport is doing its job, she argues, and it is up to governing bodies who have lost funding to get themselves to a position where they can challenge for medals. She also feels critics are forgetting the that several million a year of public cash is poured into grassroots sport by Sport England.

"Do we, as a nation, value the drive to deliver more medals in Rio? If we do, you have to invest what we've got in that. Once you start to take a broader approach and start to invest in sports that are a long way off medal potential, you reduce the amount for those that do have medal potential. That would be a compromise and we have a no-compromise approach."

I asked whether one solution might be to adopt the Canadian system of having a reserve funding for less successful sports.

"We invest what we've got in sports that have got medal potential," says Nicholl. "We are not sitting on pots of money here that we could suddenly set aside to spread further across the sports that we are withdrawing funding from. That would cost several millions of pounds to anything well.  We had the basic funding in place in the lead up to London but that was in order to give the sports the chance of a creditable performance. That cost a lot of money."

Ben Ainslie, winner of four consecutive Olympic gold medals, has been at the forefront of the success of Britain's sailors, who have been awarded with more money than ever which some critics claim could help other sports ©Getty Images

But instead of simply giving dishing out even more millions to successful sports, like the £25 million ($42 million/€30 million) to sailing, why not give them a little less and distribute some of the money saved to the struggling sports?

"I can understand people thinking that might be an option, but here at UK sport, unless you get the right money to the right athletes to the right sport, you won't get the right result," says Nicholl.

"If you compromise the investment and give the sports less than they need, they won't succeed. We would be putting at risk medal opportunities to fund sports that don't have medal potential. That would jeopardise the mission to deliver more medals.

"We have a formal appeal process so we are committed to enabling any sport that has a grievance to challenge a decision that we make. We gave all the sports that were affected to have time with our board to make a case for their funding to give us new information or strategies that we might not have considered. There were eight sports that were affected. Badminton and weightlifting came away from that representation with a good outcome and of the six remaining, one [synchronised swimming] has gone to formal appeal."

"At the end of every cycle, prior to our investment in the next four years, we always review our principles and investment approach which is very thorough. This year we are investing £350 million and we do not do that lightly, so we will be taking time over the next 12 months to see whether anything should change for the period beyond 2016 and on to Tokyo. We want to do the right thing with the resources we have and if there's any improvements we can make, we shall."

Nicholl adds: "I was thrilled to be appointed as chief executive of UK Sport, something I never imagined in my younger years when I was with netball, especially going into the London Games.  I have been with UK Sport since 1999 so I have seen the journey from the advent of National Lottery funding and managing those responsibilities since then. I am proud of what the organisation has achieved and it has always been my aim to do the best for British sport in all the decisions in which I have been involved."

So there we are. Strong views from views from a woman who is not the first to put a pair of high heels through sport's glass ceiling, and one we who is determined to not be the last.

Is it tough being in what is still regarded as essentially a man's domain?

"I spent the first 16 years of my working life in netball , predominately a women's sport," says Nicholl. "It was a good place to practise my leadership skills but I also had posts as vice-chair of CCPR (Central Council for Physical Recreation) and Commonwealth Games England which gave me confidence in my own ability around tables there were more men in suits than women.

"I remember my first meeting here when I was director of performance in UK Sport and had to meet the performance directors for the first time - they were all men. I came out of that meeting at Bisham Abbey with a wry smile on my face thinking that there was going to be a huge challenge ahead."

Former netball player Liz Nicholl is the most prominent member of a growing group of female administrators in British sport ©BBC

Nicholl has been very vocal in the past on the lack of women in sport, even advocating sanctions against governing bodies who have been dragging their heels in appointing them to their Boards. But things are improving, she says.

"Sport is not quite as male-dominated as it was," she says. "There is certainly a sea-change as far as administration is concerned. It's gradual but it's definitely, definitely changing. If you just look at the number of sports that we fund that have women non-execs on their boards, 25 per cent and increasing, with an influx of women in some really significant roles.

"It's a small number still as a percentage and there's still a lot of progress to be made. As far as getting women more involved I think it's good to start at the top, getting more balanced and diverse boards. I feel more women are coming forward now to seek these positions but where there is a real challenge across the system is women in coaching.

"At participation level there are probably about 30 per cent of female coaches but it gets smaller and smaller as you approach the elite level. We have to try and create an environment where more women come through in these high performance areas. There should be a better balance of male and female coaches but it's going to be a longer journey and we have to start with athletes who retire and persuade them to go into coaching.

"There are now so many great female role models in British sport - Nicola Adams, Katharine Grainger, Sarah Storey, Jess Ennis-Hill, Ellie Simmonds and Jade Jones to name but a few - and we must build on this.  At UK Sport we have been something of pioneers with our previous chair, Baroness Sue Campbell.  I meet quarterly with all the home country Sports Councils and we are all women apart from a male chief executive of Sport Scotland. Wales, Northern Ireland and England all have female chief executives which is quite significant. You wouldn't t have dreamt that this would be the picture ten years ago.

"Here at UK Sport all the major event consultants are women.  About six in all. If you look at the English Institute of Sport, a wholly owned subsidiary of UK Sport, across the board of 200 staff, medics, coaches, and practitioners there's a good balance of male and female."  

Of UK Sport's own staff of 110, half are women.

England 2015 chief executive Debbie Jevans is making her mark in a sport that has previoulsy been male-dominated ©Getty Images

Nicholl is at the bridgehead of a growing phalanx of female power players. These include Debbie Jevans, who was outstanding as Sebastian Coe's director of sport in 2012 and is now the head honcho of next year's Rugby World Cup. Sally Bolton, herself from the macho world of rugby where she was the architect of the successful League version here last year, has just been appointed by UK Athletics to run the 2017 World Championships.

The highly-rated Jennie Price is Nicholl's opposite number as chief executive at Sport England while Sallie Barker has taken over the same role from Tim Lamb at the Sport & Recreation Alliance.

Ex-gymnast Barbara Slater is the BBC's head of sport and Karren Brady football's leading lady as  the feisty chief executive of Premier League West Ham United, is  now overseeing their move to the Olympic Stadium.

And, of course, of course, we have a female Sports Minister in Helen Grant.

"This is a good time for women in sport," says Nicholl, pointing out that there were more GB female medalists in the Sochi 2014 Winter Games than men, and almost as many as men in Summer Games.

Married  to a retired sports management consultant, with two grown up children, and recipient of an OBE, Nicholl says that though she doesn't play netball any more she runs twice a week and is a regular at a gym.

The great legacy of the Olympics, she insists, is that "we have created  a nation believes it can win."  And she is "uncompromisingly" determined to see that winning aura maintained.

No time for losers then? Liz Nicholl's smile suggests her audience can be certain of one thing when she addresses them next week.

Sport's Iron Lady is not for turning.

Alan  Hubbard is an award-winning  sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and  world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.