Charm offensive aims to make us the ‘second most loved’ Games team

With a year to go until the Tokyo Olympics, Team GB are dreaming of another golden Games – on these two pages we take a look at their preparations

BRITISH Olympic and Paralympic bosses want to replicate the support that propelled the nation to success at London 2012 by making sure Great Britain and Northern Ireland are Japan’s second favourite team next summer.

Tokyo 2020’s Olympic opening ceremony is still 12 months away, but the British charm offensive started in 2015, a year before the last Games in Rio, and the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association are confident their teams will be the best prepared in the Japanese capital and nearly the most loved.

Speaking to reporters at the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, ParalympicsGB chef de mission Penny Briscoe said the teams got their “towels down before any other nation” in terms of finding places to acclimatise, relax and train before and during the Games.

Having previously focused on securing access to good gyms, running tracks and swimming pools at overseas Games, Briscoe said she was now asking herself a new question: “How do we endear ourselves so we’re the second most loved team in Japan?”

Building relationships with their hosts would be the key to this, she

said, and it had already started to bear fruit in the shape of a ‘Go GB 2020’ website set up by ‘Friends of Great Britain’ at the teams’ preGames bases in Kawasaki, Keio University and Yokohama.

Briscoe’s Olympic counterpart, Mark England, was also at Bisham Abbey and he said he had just returned from his 12th visit to Japan since Tokyo was awarded the Games and he “felt, saw and smelt” the level of support for Team GB.

“The comparison is London and how successful that was when we were the most favoured team,” he said. “If you can replicate some of that support, and not just in terms of spectators, that’s huge for us. We’ve absolutely secured that and I would say we secured that in Brazil as well.

“We don’t want any sport to go into Japan without giving something while they’re there.

“The hockey teams were in Hiroshima last week and they gave in terms of community engagement. Our gymnasts did presentations and a training session. Our swim team engaged hugely with the schools network across Yokohama only last week.”

Another example of this British bridge-building in Japan will be the large amount of kit Team GB leaves behind at its main Keio University holding camp in Yokohama, as a leaving gift.

The BOA has also developed ties with a school from the Fukushima region that was affected by a nuclear accident in 2011. Children from the school visited London last week and met Team GB athletes.

And, just as in Rio, all British athletes in Tokyo will be under orders to be ‘good tourists’ and leave moans about their accommodation, or critical observations about Japanese culture, food or weather, to others.

But as well as picking up support in Japan, both the BOA and BPA are keen to make it as easy as possible for the athletes’ families to join them, including young children.

England said they were “very mindful” that Tom Daley, Jason and Laura Kenny, Max Whitlock and others may want to bring their children with them and they would be supported in doing so, as “happy athletes perform better”.

There is also a good chance Tokyo 2020 will witness the largest contingent of British fans at an overseas Games as the BOA’s new travel partner, the STH Group, has already received requests for tickets from 4,000 travelling fans, five times as many who went to Rio.