Our best ever Olympics – just how did we do it?
On another golden day, Team GB bosses put push for record haul down to training strategy, Lottery cash and top coaching talent
TEAM GB’s athletes were celebrating their “best ever Olympics” last night after Britain’s extraordinary Rio 2016 success story made them the envy of the world.
Great Britain remain on course to finish second in the medal table for the first time, ahead of rivals China, who are expected to finish in third place.
Team GB are now hoping to beat the London 2012 record of 65 medals. With 64 medals already guaranteed before last night’s events, GB expects to become the first country ever to follow success as a host nation with even more medals at the following Games.
Britain’s golden games continued yesterday as Nicola Adams became the first woman to successfully defend an Olympic boxing title and Liam Heath paddled to victory in the kayak single 200m canoe sprint. Vicky Holland later claimed bronze in the women’s triathlon. There was crushing disappointment for Tom Daley, though, as he came last in the semi-final of the 10m platform diving to miss out on the final altogether.
Incredibly, GB’s athletes could win more medals than in London with a team that is a third smaller, at 366strong compared with 541 in 2012.
Mark England, Team GB’s chef de mission, said: “For sure this is our greatest ever Games. We are in South America, a place where none of our athletes have experience of competing before, we don’t have home advantage and what our athletes have done has been nothing short of extraordinary.
“It is absolutely, without question, a bigger achievement than London, not just for the medals we have won, but if we finish second in the medal table that will in many respects be an even greater achievement.
“There have been so many firsts, from Max Whitlock being the first gold medallist in gymnastics to Andy Murray being the first tennis player to defend a title, things no one in our history has done before. We are now a powerhouse in Olympic sport – fourth in Beijing, third in London and probably second here. If you took swimming out of the equation, we would even have beaten the USA.”
Adams cruised to victory in the final of the women’s flyweight division last night to add to the gold medal she won at London 2012. It was GB’s 26th gold of Rio 2016, three short of the haul in London. Fellow boxer Joe Joyce is guaranteed silver or gold when he fights in the super heavyweight final today. Heath became GB’s greatest sprint canoeist with gold in the K1 200m event to add his silver earlier in Rio and bronze from London. His wife Emily said they would be heading straight to Santorini on holiday where “I’ll celebrate by actually seeing him for the first time in four months”.
The 32-year-old gave up on his Olympic dream during his mid-20s after taking a job behind a bar. But he took up a punishing training regime to get back to the top of his sport. “To think if I hadn’t come back in I’d be missing out on this is quite scary to be honest. I’m over the moon.”
Asked what he would have said then to a suggestion he might become Olympic champion, he replied: “Are you having a laugh, mate? Do you want a pint?” His voice appearing to break with emotion, Heath said he had been thinking about this moment for the past four years. Asked how much it was worth to take gold, he sad: “Every ounce, and I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone.”
Holland clinched bronze in the triathlon to become Britain’s first female medallist in the event after beating her housemate and best friend in a late dash to the finish line. Holland and Non Stanford have been living together in the lead-up to Rio while training alongside the all-conquering Brownlee brothers in Leeds.
The best friends continued to keep close company during the race during a tense battle for third place, when Holland managed to find an extra burst of speed over the last 100m. Holland said: “I have such mixed emotions. I was absolutely delighted when I crossed the line and I still am. But to have to beat out your best friend, your training partner, your housemate is hard.”
In another incredible 24 hours, Friday’s gold medals for Nick Skelton in show jumping and for the women’s hockey team were followed in the early hours of yesterday by silver for Lutalo Muhammad in taekwondo and bronze for the women’s 4x100m relay team.
GB’s target before the Games was to beat the record for an away Games of 47 medals, set at Beijing 2008, but the athletes smashed that days ago to set their sights on the London 2012 target.
Mr England added: “We always said we were taking away our most talented team and it wasn’t just rhetoric. I genuinely believed it. I was also pretty confident we would make history and be the most successful team we have ever taken away from home. It hasn’t just been about the medals, it’s been about millions of people screaming at their televisions, whether they were watching Mo Farah, the Brownlees, Adam Peaty, the list just goes on.”
Britain’s turnaround over the past 20 years has had other countries scrambling to catch up. In 1996 the team won just 15 medals, including a solitary gold, as dedicated amateurs took on the fulltime athletes of Russia, China and the United States. Team GB finished 36th in the medal table that year.
But in 1997 the National Lottery started funding athletes so they could train full-time, and by 2004 the medal tally had doubled to 30, doubling again at London 2012 to 65.
Lord Coe, chairman of the British Olympic Association, believes a large part of the credit for Team GB’s success should go to Sir John Major, whose Conservative government set up the National Lottery in 1994.
He said: “I think it was probably the strongest legacy John Major left as a prime minister, the creation of the National Lottery. It’s changed the face of British sport, it’s changed the face of arts, culture, charity, it’s been an extraordinary contribution and I don’t think that’s ever really been properly acknowledged.
“Twenty or 30 years ago there were sports where we would have been stunned had we got competitors even qualifying for the Games; now they’re not only qualifying, they’re winning medals, and that’s a tribute to the funding formula, it’s a tribute to the National Lottery and the generosity of people in the UK that play and donate as much as they do.”
Since London 2012, Olympic sports have received £274 million in Lottery funding, with around half as much again coming from the Treasury as grants. Elite athletes earn a maximum of £28,000 tax-free, which is meanstested if their income rises above £65,000 through sponsorship and endorsements.
Simon Timson, UK Sport’s director of performance, said: “The difference between us and other countries is that we take a long-term, strategic approach, thinking in eight-year cycles so that we already have athletes who have been training for years with a view to Tokyo 2020. Other countries often have a knee-jerk reaction to success or failure in each sport. We also have the best coaching, medical and scientific support possible so that our athletes are as healthy and injury-free as is possible and have the best equipment in the world. “Sports will only get funding if they can show they have a realistic chance of winning medals. Sometimes we have to take tough decisions; we stopped funding basketball and water polo so we could fund shooting, which had better multi-medal potential, and that has translated into two medals in shooting here.” Other, less tangible factors are also in play, such as the power of one generation to inspire the next. Callum Skinner, who took up cycling aged 12 after seeing Sir Chris Hoy win gold in 2004, took over Hoy’s place in the sprint team and won gold in Rio after joining British Cycling’s medal factory at their Manchester base.
Jason Kenny, who won his sixth cycling gold medal in Rio, said cycling has created a “snowball effect” with success breeding success. The team won 11 medals in the velodrome, including six golds. No other nation won more than one gold. The double triathlon gold medallist Alistair Brownlee believes people forget just what a “sports mad nation” we live in. “We have a got a massive heritage of sport and I think that gets downplayed or overlooked sometimes,” he said.
Britain’s most successful Games were London 1908, when it topped the table with 146 medals, including 56 golds (having won just two medals in 1904). They came in sports such as rackets and tug of war. In the latter sport GB managed a clean sweep of medals, with the City of London Police winning gold, Liverpool Police silver and the Metropolitan Police “K” Division bronze. Not surprisingly, Olympic historians regard 1908 as an anomaly.
Topping Rio’s success at Tokyo 2020 will be a tall order, Mr England accepts, because Japan will be stronger than Brazil have been, Russia are likely to have a full team rather than one depleted by doping scandals, and underperforming teams such as China and Australia are expected to bounce back.
Another problem could be attempts by countries such as China, Japan and the US to lure away British coaches.
Mr Timson said: “Our system has been the envy of the world for the past eight years, and we recognise that. We have a risk register of people most likely to be targeted, and a succession plan for our best coaches, scientists and medics. But there is a huge sense of belonging within Team GB. We have the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct, we can give people a long-term future and people really want to be part of this success.”
‘To think if I hadn’t come back in I’d be missing out on this is quite scary to be honest. I’m over the moon’ ‘There is a huge sense of belonging within Team GB. We have the highest standards of conduct’