KENT'S double Olympic champion Dame Kelly Holmes has called for a shake-up in British athletics to create winners at the 2012 Games.

Addressing more than 100 tourism chiefs at the Ramada Hotel, Hollingbourne, near Maidstone, she said that throwing money at talented individual young athletes was not the only answer.

More cash than ever before was going into athletics but no one was emerging with the talent to win medals.

Dame Kelly, who won double gold in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, said UK athletics needed restructuring and more money had to be injected in coaches, facilities and sporting projects.

She stressed: "Athletics is not doing too good at the moment. Is it about giving a young athlete £5,000 and saying “become a champion.”

She added: “Everybody has got to be Olympic level in their thinking, how they bring the coaches on board, how they give the athletes the right structures to be able to benefit in the right way. It’s not just as simple as going out and chucking money at it.”

Pembury-born Dame Kelly, 36, called for high-class sports facilities to be included in the Thames Gateway development in North West Kent. The county was set to gain a lot from the 2012 Games but work had to start now.

“It’s OK talking about it but unless things start now, we will miss the boat because everyone else is going to jump on the bandwagon.”