With the state lacking the finances to pay its own workers, pensioners and creditors, Russia's once-proud sporting infrastructure has been bled dry of funding, and the collapse of the rouble has compounded the situation by eroding budget sums allocated to developing sports in the country.

Youth championships of badminton, cycling and figure skating have all been postponed in recent weeks due to a lack of funding, officials said.

Even football, Russia's most popular sport, has not escaped financial troubles. Sponsorship has spared the top clubs from buckling, but in the lower leagues, clubs are agonising over lack of funds, and some may be forced to fold up by the end of the season in late autumn.

``The funds we received from the budget were not generous, but these sumsallowed us to survive and even work on further development of sports in the country,'' deputy president of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), Anatoly Kharchuk, told AFP yesterday.

Kharchuk said the Olympic committee had not even received sponsorship funds, as cash transfers through Russia's crippled banking sector had dried up over the past two months. It had become too risky to transfer money, and in some cases even impossible, as some banks had folded up.

Russian national teams have already missed as many as 10 World Championships since the crisis began. Some athletes have attended at their own expense, but the Olympic committee is unable to compensate them.

In the Volgograd region alone, more than 150 members of National teams from across the sporting spectrum have lost critical state support, according to Russian media reports.

Among them are Olympic champion swimmers Denis Pankratov and Vladimir Selkov, weightlifter Alexei Petrov, track and field athletes Vasily Sidorenko and YekaterinaLeshcheva.

Russia's bicycle federation was stunned when the Russian Olympic Committee said it could only pay for 10 participants to compete in the upcoming World Road Championship in the Netherlands. The federation authorities had to quickly find funding for another 30 team members.

The federation has already given up plans to replace the national team's bicycles, some of which are six years old.

Moscow basketball clubs meanwhile are disappearing one by one because of a cash shortage. Konik and Dynamo have already folded, while Sportacademclub had to pull out of the European Korac Cup and is also on the verge of disbanding.

Ice hockey, so popular in Russia, has hit hard times. Five clubs from the Moscow region reported they were not sure if they would be able to play all their away matches in the season because of the huge road expenses.

Russia's sporting authorities have already reported that a shortage of state funding for youth sport could severely undermine the country's sporting achievementsafter the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But the financial crisis may advance that date to the near future.