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great britain running riot in rio
T
eam GB left Brazil this year with
a record medal tally of 67; 27
gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze.
Defying
the
post-hosting
hangover, Team GB managed to beat its
record of 65 garnered at home in 2012.
Similarly, ParalympicsGB won 147
medals, 64 gold, 39 silver, 44 bronze
beating the 121 medals won in London
2012
This is not an aberration or a fluke:
this enormous sustained success is
testament to a plan which has become
the envy of world sport.
The path to Olympic and Paralympic
glory has its genesis in two unlikely
sources: Atlanta 1996 and former Prime
Minister John Major.
The mid-nineties were a time of
national shame for British sport. While
still having pretentions of footballing
prominence – constantly shattered
at each knock out stage of each cup -
its other teams were mostly on the
ropes. The Australian cricket team had
rendered the Ashes a formality, and
this haplessness was repeated down
the line.
There was a theory at the time that Brits
were just too nice, too gentlemanly,
to be winners. But for every foppish
David Gower, there was a glowering
Ian Botham. The problem wasn’t about
talent: it was systemic.
Atlanta saw Britain pick up one gold and
end the Olympics in 37th spot, behind
such powerhouses as Kazakhstan,
Belgium and Algeria. Even for the
UK, this was unacceptable, so John
Major belied his nerdish exterior and
committed to sport in a big way.
With the advent of the National Lottery
the following year, he portioned out
one fifth of the revenue to sport. This
massive injection changed the trajectory
of Olympic sport in Great Britain.
The first step was adopting the
ephemeral “winning mentality”. And
where better to catch the mongrel
needed to win than from the old
enemy, Australia. Bill Sweetenham
was brought in to change things in
the pool, and he wrong-footed many
with his swagger and straight-forward
style. Other Australians were sprinkled
over Olympic sports, but many were
dispensed with once things started to
turn around.
These mavericks could give Britain a
short kick to the rear, but they could
never beat a systemic, top-down
approach. The British approach to
Olympic sport became a scientific, cold-
blooded machine.
Today, UK Sport can directly be credited
with what happened in Rio for Britain.
Massively funded, the system leaves
nothing to chance as it focuses on
pumping out medalists.
To start with, sports where Britain can
reliably win are targeted. These are soft
targets where there is less international
competition. Basketball is an example
where regardless of the passionate
support it reserves, it gets little to no
support from UK Sport.
With only two medals available and the
USA team inevitably facing them in the
final, it is not considered a strategic
sport. Table tennis gets less money
each cycle, given the fact that Asian
nations have dominated the sport for
so long.
In this system, success and cash have
a symbiotic relationship. Moneyballers
in the statistics division calculate the
chances of medals, and money is moved
in the direction of winners. Tip your
quota, and more money comes pouring
in. Slip under the bar, and the money-
tap gets turned down to a trickle.
But even draining a sport of its funds
can have positive results. "In the early
2000s, [the gymnastics team was] in a
pretty low state. They hadn't had a good
Games at Sydney, and their funding was
cut on behalf of that," says the chair of
UK Sport, Rod Carr.
"They went right back to basics, they
disassembled their program and looked
at what was working, and what wasn't,
and then built it up again."
Team GB’s gymnastics squad went on
to win seven medals, including two gold
in Rio.
If the system was not delivering, there
would certainly have been an outcry at
how the money is moved. But it can be
argued that most punters don’t care
about how many medals come from the
pool, or the velodrome, or the dressage
field: they like the numbers.
UK Sport likes the numbers too, but in
a different way. According to UK Sport
performance director, this is “success
by design”. Marginal gains are eked
out by looking closely at what works
for successful athletes. This can be
as minute as diet, sleeping patterns,
equipment and training peaks.
Micromanaging the competitor’s lives
can be the hair’s breadth between silver
and gold, but raw material is crucial. UK
Sport identifies two aspects to getting
the right people on that bike or balance
bar.
First, according to sports writer Simon
Barnes, Team GB needed “pathfinders:
the ones who can defy the balance of
world power in a sport, establish a
road to victory and show other British
athletes that they can tread it, too.”
These pathfinders were people like
Jason Queally and Bradley Wiggins, who
both won golds in cycling, a sport UK
Sport quickly identified as “winnable”.
Four years later, Britain won eight golds
in cycling, but they couldn’t have done
it without Chris Broadman’s solitary
bronze in the dog days of Atlanta.