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Let's start with the beef. It was wagyu beef - - and the grateful recipient was one Jessica Ennis, the world and European heptathlon champion.

"I went to watch Jess in Berlin last year at the World Championships," explains Wells. "She won and she'd never had wagyu beef before, so I took her to a Michelin-starred restaurant for that as a reward.

"Jess rocketed to fame when she won there. That was a big step-change, she became real public property as a face of 2012. I'd arranged to meet her for this Japanese meal but I thought she'd probably cancel because the media and sponsors were crawling all over her.

"But at 7.30am a text comes in, saying: 'Don't forget our lunch at one o'clock'. I would have understood if she'd asked to rearrange it. But that's what the trust is about, really. That was touching."

Wells with one of the London 2012 prospects he chose to fund, 16-year-old heptathlete Katarina Thompson

Clearly, the beef isn't much of a training aid. Not everything Wells offers "his" athletes - Ennis being at the top of the tree, as - has any sort of direct impact on their training and performance. Often, he uses his cash to procure fun incentives for Britain's finest to raise the bar.

Backstroke swimmer Lizzie Simmonds got the keys to the Bentley, if only for one afternoon, as a result of at the European Championships in August.

The chance to meet Liverpool skipper Gerrard, alongside striker Fernando Torres, fell to teenage heptathlete Katarina Thompson after an impressive performance at the junior World Championships. Wells, a keen Liverpool supporter with his own box at Anfield (usually used to offer terminally ill children the chance to see a game), has the connections to make that happen.

But these are publicity stunts as much as rewards for the athletes concerned, designed to prove as attractive to the media as they are to the athletes. What matters more is the day-to-day support Wells has been able to offer to young athletes, injecting vital cash to remove some of the stresses which accumulate when training intensively in punishing circumstances.

Schoolgirl by day and swimmer by evening, 17-year-old Anne Bochmann has just finished double physics and is about to head into a chemistry lesson when she answers the phone. She successfully convinced Wells to support her last year, and has since spent around 拢8,000 of his money - on taxis to and from training.

"It means I can train with my coach, who's the same one I've had since I was 12," she explains. "I need to stay with him to reach my potential. I moved from Norwich to Leeds for swimming and, without Barrie's money, I wouldn't have been able to do it."

Wells adds: "Anne will be up there as a finalist in 2012. We'll pay for driving lessons for her now she's 17, and look at getting her a car. Then, nearer the Olympics, I'll pay for her to have an apartment in Leeds to be near her coach."

These are costs which most, if not all, British governing bodies would balk at paying. As they are accountable to funding body UK Sport and - in a slightly less tangible sense - the public, they must be seen to spend only on what is absolutely necessary for success in 2012.

Wells, who can use his money how he likes and on the sports he likes, has no such worries. He picks UK Athletics as an example, saying: "They need to have a mechanistic funding strategy - if they're funding hundreds of athletes, it needs to be formula-driven.

"But I can look outside that formula and do things they couldn't do because they're driven by rules for everybody. I'm just about to fund Jenny Meadows, the 800m runner, who got bronze in Berlin last year and silver at the World Indoor championships.

"She's coached by her husband, who has given up his job to work with her full-time. Previously, she'd wait all day for him to come home, then start training in the evening. I met them for lunch and they explained their situation to me. I said I'd support them until 2012."

Since the start, Wells has been clear about what he expects in return. Athletes receiving his help must spend three or four days talking to students in schools on his behalf (they all gladly do - it's a small price to pay). Similarly, the slightest hint of drug or alcohol abuse would get them dropped. They are expected to become first-class role models.

However, axing athletes is the last thing on Wells' mind. It is more common that his freedom to flout the usual rules of Olympic sport funding, where success and progress are key, means he continues to support athletes who lose the financial backing of their governing bodies.

Promising triathlete Charlotte Roach had only just joined the , which moves athletes from other sports into triathlon and is entirely funded by Wells, when she was involved in a road accident. Wells takes up the story:

"A 4x4 went over her and she was about 15 minutes from dying; she was in a total mess. She clearly had no way of getting back for 2012 and British Triathlon stopped her funding - and they were right to do that, their funding is for 2012 but Charlotte needed at least nine months to recover.

"Now she's going into schools and telling the story about how she came near to death, but came back and finished fourth in a World Cup event. It's a wonderful story. She's not a 2012 prospect, let's be realistic, but I want her to carry on being an ambassador."

Seasons don't have to take such drastic turns for athletes to worry about funding. Katie Ingram, another young triathlete battling up the rankings ahead of 2012, had a bike crash over the summer which put her out of racing for a chunk of the season. Naturally, she wondered if Wells would think twice about investing any more cash.

"I rang him because it meant I needed to compete in extra races to up my ranking, and that obviously costs money. He immediately asked what he could do to help," she says.

"Barrie's just been amazing with all these extra costs. I had volcano disruption, too - I was in a race in Mexico then got stuck in Houston because of the , and had to spend an extra two weeks there. I sent Barrie an email and he sent cash over to help me out and paid for my accommodation.

"A lot of people ask about the pressure, but I just see it as help. It's someone helping me do what I've always wanted to do: a sport I love."

Wells has been to Qatar, Germany, Hungary, Spain and Canada with his athletes, so he is a familiar face to many British governing bodies. If they are at all concerned about this character wandering into their sports and throwing money at athletes of his choice, they don't show it. And it is no surprise that the presence of a millionaire philanthropist is met by unqualified approval from the man clutching UK Sport's purse strings, chief operating officer Tim Hollingsworth.

"I think Barrie is one of life's good guys and what he's doing is having a genuine benefit and impact, not least because he's attached his support to the principle of athletes being role models, which is hugely productive," says Hollingsworth.

Lizzie Simmonds, Wells' tip for 2012 gold, wins at the Euros (UK users only)

UK Sport operates its own scheme, Team 2012, which seeks to attract entrepreneurs like Wells and match them with Olympic sports in need of cash. Five individuals with money to burn, including Dr Chai Patel (the former chief executive of Priory Healthcare), have signed up for Team 2012 and invested at least 拢250,000 in Britain's Olympic sports. A further 25 have contributed between 拢100,000 and 拢250,000, with more coughing up smaller amounts.

Wells, however, operates on his own. Ignoring UK Sport's overtures means he must do extra legwork to get his money into the right places, but he also gets to choose exactly which places those are. Hollingsworth must, publicly, advocate the more carefully managed Team 2012 approach, but in practice UK Sport will raise few complaints no matter how Wells chooses to lob money at British Olympic hopefuls.

Hollingsworth adds that all necessary background checks on Wells have been completed. After all, if you must nominally prove you are a "fit and proper" candidate to own a British football team, your cupboard ought to be clear of skeletons if you're on the front line of Britain's Olympic programme.

Quite how involved Wells now becomes is up to him, but he has no shortage of offers. Word will always spread of a multi-millionaire prepared to invest in anyone meeting certain criteria.

"I get approached all the time, by athletes from all sorts of sports. Last week, I had a letter from the world's number two in taekwondo, a girl from Liverpool," he says, naming no names (but a bit of searching and a trawl of won't take you long).

"I know nothing about taekwondo - I don't understand it as a sport, so that may be a move too far. Normally I would have turned it down.

"But I've gone on the web and checked up on it, and I've also forwarded her letter and CV to two of my athletes, Michael Rimmer and Katarina Thompson, and asked if they've come across her. So the jury's out on that one."

That prevarication evaporates when you ask him which of his current recruits he backs for 2012. If all the cash he's ploughing into Olympic sport were to be staked on one Wells athlete winning gold, who would it be?

"Jess Ennis is up there but of course, she has to stay healthy. For swimmers, it's much tougher to get injured. It has to be Lizzie Simmonds."