Team GB at top table for breadth of Olympic success
‘I want to see a Team GB in 2032 that looks and sounds like the whole population of the country’
TEAM GB may be some way off the Olympic powerhouses at the top of the table, but British athletes have won medals in a record number of events.
Britain has won more medals across a wider number of sports than ever before at the Tokyo Olympics, beating China, Russia and hosts Japan.
Team GB has won 63 medals across 23 events as defined by the official Olympics website, a performance that improves on the breadth of events in which it competed successfully at the Rio games, where it won 67 medals but across only 19 events.
The US topped the medal table at Tokyo with a total of 108 medals across 27 different events, while China won 87 medals across the relatively low number of 20 events.
Britain’s sports chiefs say the results from Tokyo show the growing strength of this country’s sporting prowess across a wide spectrum of events.
Andy Hunt, chief executive of Podium Analytics, said: “For Team GB, it’s really been an excellent performance. I love the diversity of medals we have. And maybe not as many gold medals as we’ve had at previous games, but at fourth place in the position we’re in at the moment, I think it’s a fantastic achievement.”
Chris Grant, board member for Sport England, added: “The performances generally are a real step forward for us, so even if we end up with slightly fewer medals in all, the fact is we’re performing so brilliantly across all sports.”
However, Sport England believes that Team GB has work to do in recruiting top athletes from a broader spectrum of society.
In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Grant said: “We’ve got great athletes from around the UK, but they tend to come from the leafy fringes of our cities or the countryside. We have gaping holes in our cities and we’re wasting or ignoring massive talent, so I want to see a Team GB and a Paralympics GB in 2032 that looks and sounds like the whole population of the country and that will be a massive boost not just for our sporting success, but for our national success.”
He said the inclusion of BMX at the games had given Britain the opportunity to include more athletes from different backgrounds, but he also urged sports administrators and selectors to broaden their vision when recruiting for sports such as sailing and rowing, considered to be middle-class preserves.
“If we imagine what a rower, or a sailor, looks like, we see a certain thing. But go to Hackney and you’ll find a school that runs a rowing programme and I think it’s a huge opportunity. It’s not just about sporting success, it’s about social mobility… It’s a real responsibility for sport to take a leading role in the UK in what you might call ‘levelling up’.”
Nigel Huddleston, the sports minister, praised Team GB’s performance at the Tokyo Olympics and looked ahead to the Paralympic Games.
He said: “Our Olympic athletes have been an absolute credit to Great Britain with incredible, inspirational performances giving us many medal-winning-moments that will live long in the memory.
“I look forward to the Paralympics where in two weeks’ time the country will be cheering on our brilliant Paralympic athletes as they make us proud in Tokyo.”