The gymnastics community went into meltdown on Wednesday over news the Western Australian Institute of Sport is cutting $700,000 annual funding of a 28-year-old high-performance base for women.

The Perth-based program has groomed the likes of world champion Lauren Mitchell, and Gymnastics Australia president Jacqui Briggs-Weatherill has told Fairfax Media she was "shocked and appalled" by the move and had "no idea" WAIS would effectively close the program.

WAIS executive director Steve Lawrence responded to the criticism on Wednesday by denying Gymnastics Australia was not consulted over the matter.

Meanwhile, Australian Olympic Committee secretary general Fiona de Jong highlighted a bigger picture.

"We are deeply disappointed to learn of this," she said.

"Our consideration is not just for the elite gymnastics program. Gymnastics is very often a feeder sport to so many other sports so the impact of this is beyond gymnastics.

"If I look at top athletes in recent years that have come from gymnastics it's a rather long list that includes a significant number of gold medallists including Matt Mitcham, he was a gymnast first, Chantelle Newbery, Alisa Camplin and Lydia Lassila."

Australia failed to qualify a team in the women's artistic gymnastics competition ahead of next month's Olympics in Rio for the first time in three decades.

Gymnastics Australia has highlighted the fact it missed qualifying by two points and that the women's squad was injury ravaged.

Cutting the elite program for women gymnasts in Perth will leave just one comparable base for female artistic gymnasts in Australia: in Melbourne. This added to the distress of Western Australia families with young girls in the WAIS gymnastics program who, in protest, have launched a petition to overturn the funding cut.

WAIS boss Lawrence said cutting the $700,000 his organisation has spent annually on women's artistic gymnastics from its $7.5 million Western Australian government allocation was a hard, but entirely reasonable, position in Australia's current sports climate.

"We started consulting with GA, executive to executive level, in December last year," he said.

"Our role is to support Western Australian contribution to Australia's international (sporting) success ... the reality is that over a number of years GA's national high-performance system for women's gymnastics has been in decline.

"The facts are this: in 2008 the Queensland Academy of Sport shut down its program, in 2010 the AIS shut down its program and in 2015 GA took over the VIS program ... so they [GA] are running (and funding) that program in Victoria."

De Jong said: "We get that this is an investment position for the WAIS ... but I think looking at just the contribution of WA athletes to gymnastics' medal tally is a simplistic view of the world when you look at the knock-on effect it has the potential to have.

"It is so tough for us to develop our athletes, and every facility counts in our contribution to certainly Olympic medals."