A pertinent question of sport: Are the Government and its various funding agencies hard of hearing?

Because they don't seem to be getting the message from those athletes who unfortunately are.

Actually, it was just as well that Britain sent no-one to the Winter Deaflympics in the High Tatras of Slovakia last week. The event had to be scrapped because apparently the local organiser did a downhill runner with the money.

Police are pursuing him.

But the fact is Britain was not represented among the 800 putative competitors largely because we could not afford to send anyone. Deaf athletes are easily the poor relations of disability sport, their meagre amount of Government funding via UK Sport (a trifling £126,000 over four years) having ceased because of other, more obviously pressing, priorities.

"UK Sport have made it explicitly clear that because the Government is focussing on the Olympic and Paralympic Games there is no money available for deaf athletes, of which there are thousands in this country," Mark Dolley, a former International Olympic Committee (IOC) communications director now newly-appointed as chief executive of the UK-based International Committee of Sports for the Deaf, tells us.

"The Government is picking up the entire £95 million tab for the Paralympics but not a penny for deaf athletes."

Deaf sports were originally part of the Paralympic Movement but they never included the Paralympic Games and subsequently withdrew in 1990.

Another Briton, Leicester-based Craig Crowley, a former medal winning Deaflympian himself who previously ran UK Deaf Sport is now the international body's President. He has fought a long, hard and frustrating battle to get greater recognition for deaf sport in this country but says: "Doors seem constantly closed to us and we are very concerned for the future."

The only heartening news is a recent cordial meeting with the IOC. with whom they are keen to improve relations. The British Olympic Association are also sympathetic but what deaf sport is cash and material support, not just tea and sympathy.

As Matthew Talbot, an ex-Sport England employee and one of the Deaf UK snowboarders who had hoped to go to the ill-fated Deaflympics puts it: "I just don't understand why the Government thinks we should get no help at all. I train just as hard as Olympic and Paralympic athletes. And when we go to bed, we all have the same dreams of making our country proud. Why has the Government decided that our country should be proud of able-bodied and disabled British athletes but not deaf British athletes? It doesn't make any sense to me."

Jonathan Reid, of UK Deaf Sport, says:" We launched a nationwide campaign in 2008-2009 when a large number of MPs confirmed their support to UKDS's cause and raised questions in Parliament over the unfair treatment Deaf sport was receiving over
funding.

"UKDS was then advised by UK Sport that we should approach Sport England for funding. Sport England informed UKDS that they make a substantial amount of funding available to EFDS (English Federation of Disability Sport).

"Despite being one of EFDS' recognised Members, UKDS has been frustrated by their inability to provide core funding. In the last financial quarter, we requested a paltry £4,039 to keep UKDS operating for another three months to allow UKDS to retain the services of its part-time co-ordinator and enable further negotiations on funding to take place with EFDS and Sport England.

"The very national disability body which should be assisting deaf sport has so far been unable to effectively support UKDS for such a small amount of money and that for UKDS to find that the previous Government, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), UK Sport and now Sport England and EFDS all seem to have avoided the issue of core funding."

The current Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, has shown himself to be not only an affable and able bloke, but a good listener. Let's hope he gets the drift, for deaf athletes, so used to the sound of silence,  seem to have become Britain's forgotten sporting community.

The last Summer Deaflympics in Taipai two years ago, in which the Taiwanese government invested $35 million, saw 3,700 participants in 21 sports. The next are scheduled for Athens in 2013 and Britain would like to be represented. So isn't it time we stopped turning a deaf ear?

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.