It was two days before Christmas, the so-called season of goodwill, when British Weight Lifting announced they had suspended the Olympic funding of teenage prodigy Zoë Smith. Some Christmas present for their sole potentially world class competitor.

Sometimes you despair of British sporting bureaucracy.

This arbitary decision, albeit tagged "temporary" would seem farcical if it wasn't so petty.

Zoe is the charismatic runner-up to Tom Daley as BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year who has heaved a seriously under-achieving sport (just two Olympic medalists in half a century) out of its mediocrity by the winning an historic Commonwealth Games bronze at 16 and breaking 317 records in her brief but prolific career.

But, primarily because she was deemed 'overweight' at a training camp they have questioned her commitment and stopped her £6,000 annual funding - as they did once before in a dispute over her coaching programme.

Soon after I highlighted this in my Independent on Sunday column it was restored-and backdated.

Now, once again the Leeds-based governing body have stopped the "naughty" London schoolgirl's pocket money because, according to their press release, "The BWL world class programme decided they could not continue to support and athlete who was not committed to following a structured training programme or ensuring they stabilised their body weight."

It is hard to conceive of any other sports body that would take such heavy-handed action against their only genuine 2012 medal prospect.

As he mum Niki says, Zoë he hasn't done anything to bring the sport into disrepute, nor anything distasteful or damaging. What she has done is give weightlifting, a sport dogged domestically by years of under-achievement and internationally by dope-taking, a much-needed better image.

A case of clean and knee-jerk?



"They seem to forget she's still just a kid, a young girl who needs to explore herself as a person and grow as an individual," she says." Surely she deserves encouragement and support, not punishment.

"Yes, she has missed a few training sessions but she has had a shoulder injury and some illness, and also three weeks of schoolwork too catch up with after being in India. This is a daft, inexplicable decision."

One that was possibly prompted by Zoe askinng to be withdrawn from the European Junior Championships in Cyprus for which she had been entered - despite her own personal coach, Andy Callard, earlier in the year saying to Fiona Lothian, the BWL performance manager, and Tamas Feher, the national coach, that he thought it would be too soon after the Commonwealths for Zoe to be in top shape and that he didn't think she should go.

Saysd Niki: "At the end of the day though, Zoe had to ask to withdraw because of a strain to her shoulder caused during her first lift in Delhi. As usual she dug deep, ignored the pain and still went on to win England's first ever women's Commonwealth weightlifting medal and become the youngest Commonwealth weightlifting medalist in history.

"I would have hoped that they [BWL] would have remembered that Zoe by far exceeded every performance target that had been set for her this year at the same time as very successfully sitting her GCSEs and dealing with an array of media requests which helped to put the spotlight on her sport as much as herself.

"For a 16 year old girl, I think you'll agree that's quite a lot to handle. It makes you wonder just what is behind all this."

Indeed. Most other countries would have rewarded her for winning a bronze in Delhi, not penalised her as seems to be the case.

Zoe says she struggled to make the 58kg weight in Delhi.

Athletes in several sports have weight problems - boxers fight the scales all the time. They either make it or move up a division. Was Zoe given this opportunity?

As Fiona Lothian is former athlete herself - in the triathlon and duathlon - one might have thought that BWL's performance manager would have had more empathy with young Zoë, who was already worth her weight in gold - the colour of the medal she won as a 14-year-old at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Puna, heaving three times her own body weight over her head to become a thrilling prospect in a sport which has not seen a British lifter anywhere near the Olympic podium for a quarter of a century. Dave Mercer was the last with a bronze in 1984.

A former gymnast with the physique of a Comaneci but the power of a pantechnicon in her arms, she won the first major competition she entered, the South East County Championships, and has, quite literally, gone from strength to strength, culminating in that Commonwealth Games bronze in Delhi less than three months ago as the youngest member of Team England. She lifted a total of 159kg – one of the multitude of junior and senior records she has broken this year – for the snatch, clean and jerk. Earlier, she was in Beijing as part of the British Olympic Association's Olympic Ambitions programme.

No dumb belle, either. She is an A-level student at Townley Grammar School in Bexleyheath and hopes to go to university to study languages.

Because she is, as Ms Lothian herself admits, "an amazing talent" and is winsome and photoghenic. Zoe has attracted more media attention than weightlifting has enjoyed sine the days of Louis Martin and Precious McKenzie.

She now has an agent - as has Tom Daley - to help her cope with this and it may be that BWL's action is an attempt to remind her that she is not bigger than the sport. Though the fact is that at the moment she probaby is.

She is also something of a free spirit and – like Britain's other foremost female lifter, the now retired Michelle Breeze - has largely done things successfully her way rather than the way the governing body have wanted her to.

OK, a firm kick up the backside may have been required to get her back on course after Delhi but not a vicious kick in the teeth.

If her appeal is not upheld at a meeting on January 7 and private funding is not forthcoming, Zoë, who says is "gutted" to have her vital financial support withdrawn, may well decide to quit the sport. How tragic.

In the meantime surely funding distributors UK Sport, who are known to have had concerns about weightlifting's lack of progress towards, 2012, should be questioning Ms Lothian and co whether throwing their own weight around really is the right way to treat this talented young lady.

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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.