Maybe1day

I couldn't help but notice that many of the top Italian sportsmen and women are in the military, ie they are supposedly soldiers, but they train full time etc., this appears to me as state sponsorship or worse.
Is this the same in the UK, This was common in Eastern block countries eons ago, probably still is?

Garbatellamike

Not that way in UK methinks. In my sport the top guy in the world is, allegedly, a French Gendarme and the Italian number 1 is Corpo Forestale whilst the top Brits all seem to be Masters or PhD students (i.e. perpetual students who try to get enough sponsorship to be elite athletes as welll). Looking at the results from the last World Military Championship (CISM) gives this result:

1 Matthias Kyburz Switzerland 24:44 0:00 World Ranked 5th
2 Lauri Sild Estonia 25:49 1:05 28th
3 Matthias Merz Switzerland 26:00 1:16 ex no 1
4 Daniel Hubmann Switzerland 26:08 1:24 2nd
5 Frèdèric Tranchand France 26:19 1:35 14
6 Andrey Khramov Russia 26:24 1:40 61st
7 Andreas Kyburz Switzerland 26:40 1:56 19th
8 Leonid Novikov Russia 26:42 1:58 52nd
9 Francois Gonon France 26:53 2:09 67th
10 Edgars Bertuks Latvia 27:04 2:20 18th
11 Florian Howald Switzerland 27:12 2:28 23rd
12 Valentin Novikov Russia 27:15 2:31 32nd
13 Baptiste Rollier Switzerland 27:24 2:40 10th
14 Gernot Kerschbaumer Austria 27:43 2:59 29th
15 Martins Sirmais Latvia 27:44 3:00 68th

This suggests that France, Russia, Switzerland, Estonia, Latvia, all use the military to pay their professional athletes as I know Poland do as the entire Polish Relay team at the last World Championship were from the Polish Air Force.