Britain’s gold rush
Why are we winning in Rio?
What happened
Great Britain started the week in second place in the Olympics gold medal table, trailing only the United States, and ahead of both China and Russia. On what was quickly dubbed “Super Sunday”, Team GB won no fewer than five gold medals and three silver ones – the country’s best-ever daily haul in a foreign Olympics. It was the high point of a Games in which Britain has done well in its specialised disciplines, such as cycling, rowing and dressage ( see page 20), but also outperformed expectations in other sports such as gymnastics, trampolining and table tennis.
The official Team GB target in Rio was 48 medals, one more than its previous best at an overseas Olympics, in Beijing in 2008. But British athletes passed that target in the middle of the week, and set themselves the more ambitious target of bettering the 65 medals they won in London in 2012. Simon Timson, director of performance for UK Sport, the Government agency that allocates funding for Olympic and Paralympic sport, said the UK’S strong showing was “success by design”, the result of years of targeted investment.
What the editorials said
All those predictions about Rio 2016 being a flop look “pretty silly” now, said The Guardian. Granted, the Games have had their share of problems – the diving pool turning green, dodgy plumbing in the Olympic Village, events played in half-empty stadiums – but the sport has been superb. And to cap it off, the UK has put it a storming performance. What makes Team GB particularly inspiring, said the Daily Mail, is its “sheer diversity”. From “ethnic minority boxers from tough inner cities” to public school-educated rowers, it contains individuals from all walks of life and all parts of the UK. “They are an embodiment of Britain’s ability to succeed through teamwork and honest endeavour.”
Rio has given Britain a much needed “lift” in the wake of the disorienting Brexit vote, said The Daily Telegraph. What a contrast to our performance in Atlanta 20 years ago, where we won just one gold medal and finished 36th in the medals table, behind Ireland and New Zealand. We have John Major to thank for much of this astonishing turnaround. It was his decision, as PM, to set up the National Lottery, which since 1994 has been pumping money into British sport that has helped transform our athletes into “world beaters, not just participants”.
What the commentators said
Team GB’S emergence as an Olympic “powerhouse” is not a freak phenomenon, said Joshua Robinson in The Wall Street Journal. It’s the result of a “calculated decision 19 years ago to funnel money into track cycling”, now the UK’S richest source of medals. Cycling was chosen on the basis that it could give the most productive return on investment. Britain’s cycling team is now the best-funded in the world: their budget over the past four years has exceeded £32m; the US, by contrast, spends around $1m a year on track cycling. This enables the Brits to keep one step ahead of rivals with new technological innovations. As one despairing US coach put it, the Brits get to the Olympics and “just unload their nuclear weapons on you”.
Money alone doesn’t explain Team GB’S success, said Claire Bates on BBC News online; it’s also the ruthless way it is shared out. Funding is only given to sports that can demonstrate medal potential in the next two Games – “and one poor Olympic result can lead to funding being cut altogether”. Take the women’s indoor volleyball team. It rose more than 60 places in the rankings to reach the world’s top 20 in the four years prior to the 2012 London Games, but lost all its funding when it failed to win a medal. “The UK did not even send a volleyball team to Rio this year.”
The success of the sporting model holds wider lessons for government, said Janan Ganesh in the FT. It’s clear that “money matters”, but that performance metrics are also key. “The read-across to public administration is performance-related pay, not a rise for every teacher, and hospital league tables, not an article of credulous faith that all providers do an equally fabulous job.” The model also shows that it pays to play to your strengths. In economic terms, Britain’s strongest areas are financial services, higher education and very specialised manufacturing. “It would be nice to win at beach volleyball, but then, it would be nice to make steel at competitive prices. Neither warrants throwing good and scarce money after bad.”
What next?
Some critics say UK Sport’s “no compromise” approach has gone too far and is damaging grass-roots sport, says Josh Halliday in The Guardian. They argue that the focus on medals has diverted funding from sports such as basketball that have a lot of social potential. In May, Sport England, which focuses on grassroots sport, unveiled a fouryear strategy to target “inactivity”.
Spare a thought, meanwhile, says Robert Hardman in the Daily Mail, for the producers of Sports Personality of the Year 2016 as they try to come up with a shortlist.