FIVE local athletes will receive National Lottery funding during 2008 as they enter the final phase of their preparations for the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing.

Nationally, a total of 234 will receive support across all levels of the World Class Programme with 43 able-bodied and 20 disabled athletes being given the highest level of aid as World Class Podium Athletes.

Joining the likes of Paula Radcliffe, Jessica Ennis and Marlon Devonish are Paralympic sprinters Graeme Ballard and Michael Churm.

Graeme, aged 28, and Michael, who is 26, are named for their successes in the 100 metre sprints.

Members of Chorley Athletic Club, they are both cerebral palsy sufferers with Ballard competing in the T36 class and Churm with a lesser disability in the T37s.

Subject to fitness, they are both near certainties for the Paralympics and will probably run in the 100m, 200m and relays.

Laura Finucane from Pendle Athletic Club is one of 67 World Class Development Athletes, a list that is further supplemented by 22 paralympians.

At 21, Laura is a veteran of the "On Camp with Kelly" programme headed by Dame Kelly Holmes and has repaid Holmes' faith in her by recovering from a stress fracture to set personal bests of 2:01.35 and 4:34.88 in the 800m and 1500m this season.

She earned her funding for performances in the 800m having finished sixth in the European U23 Championships and sixth again at the World University Games, and Holmes believes she might yet book a place on the plane to Beijing.

Alison Leonard and Sophie Hitchon are included in the list of World Class Talent Athletes, the category which concentrates on the younger prospects who will be aiming for the London Olympics in 2012 - and now given the added incentive of the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow in 2014.

At 16, Sophie has been included for the first time after an amazing season which has seen her become the first (and still the only) U17 brit to throw the hammer more than 50 metres.

Her best of 54.56m is nearly six metres in advance of the opposition and also puts her two metres clear in the U20 standings.

The Pendle athlete was also incredibly consistent and won virtually every domestic title going including the English Championship.

She was selected for the World Youth Championships at Ostrava in the Czech Republic, but it was Blackburn Harrier Alison Leonard who stole the limelight there.

The 17-year-old from Chorley won the silver medal in the 800 metres with what her club chairman described as probably the best performance by a female athlete in the 97-year history of the club.

That view was endorsed by Kelly Holmes who presented her with an Outstanding Achievement Award, and by Lancashire AA who honoured her with the Leg Rogerson Trophy for the best performance by an athlete from the county during the year.