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The British Olympic Association have promised “to get back at the Aussies” and rise up the medal table at Los Angeles in 2028 after a significant drop in golds despite another huge medal haul.
While the overall number of medals won by Team GB is being celebrated by the BOA, a review into how it did not include more golds will take place.
Andy Anson, the chief executive of the BOA, described the medal tally of 65 – which surpassed Tokyo 2021 and equalled London 2012 – as “incredible” but revealed frustrations at dropping to seventh in the medal table after 14 golds; the fewest since 2004.
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UK Sport would usually expect around 30 per cent of all Olympic medals to be gold but a greater conversion between podiums and wins meant that France, Australia, Japan and the Netherlands were all higher than Team GB in the official medal table despite fewer medals.
Anson joked that “we’re adopting the American way of counting [all] medals going forward” in reference to the USA adopting that formula when they fell behind China on gold medals and also emphasised the many firsts in Paris.
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Of the 327-strong British team, 127 athletes will return with a medal of some description; the highest ever. Team GB also won medals in more sports (18) than ever before and, for the first time, secured at least one medal every day.
Describing the Paris Games as “sensational,” Anson said: “I think the breadth of success is incredibly important in terms of the resonance it has around the country – 65 medals is a brilliant achievement.
“It’s frustrating to be seventh in the medal table. This has been an unbelievably competitive Olympic Games. The middle bit of the medal table below the United States and China feels incredibly competitive.
“There were near misses. We’ve got to celebrate the medals. We’ve got to do that first, and then, as UK Sport, the national governing bodies, ourselves, we’ve got to sit back when we get home and just say, ‘Was there something? Is it sport by sport? Individual issues? Was there something more systematic? Let’s look across the whole scene… but in a controlled way.
“I, for one, can’t wait for Los Angeles, because I think it [the Olympics] is going to become even bigger by then. Bring on LA because we’re going to get back at the Aussies and get back up that medal table.”
Team GB have been among the top five in the Olympic medals table at every Games since Beijing in 2008 and, while chef de mission Mark England did say last year that “the wheels are going to have to come off” for that not to again happen, there is a belief that having the third-highest overall tally provides significant mitigation.
“I think it’s hard to feel like that,” said Anson. “It’s this continual fine tuning, figuring out what can be done better to move forward. When you win in 18 different sports, something is going very right as well and we’ve got to celebrate that.”
It could sound rather desperate to start mentioning luck or too many freakishly close finishes but, having so often been on the right side of fine margins in 2016 and 2021, there were certainly an unusually high number of agonising moments in Paris. Adam Peaty’s Covid, Kate French’s illness and Katie Archibald’s broken leg were all cited by Anson – and Peaty, Matt Richards, Josh Kerr, Matthew Hudson-Smith, Emma Wilson, Amber Rutter and Katarina Johnson-Thompson were all within fractions of gold.
Rivals have learnt from Team GB success
But there are also wider forces at work. Australia, who took UK Sport’s respected performance director Chelsea Warr shortly before the Tokyo Games, have now also recruited Mel Marshall, the inspiration behind Peaty, and are building impressively towards Brisbane in 2032. Many nations, including the French and Dutch, have taken direct learnings from how Britain became an Olympic super power and, only this weekend, representatives from India were picking Anson’s brains.
Such a glut of golds in sports like sailing and cycling – where Team GB had also taken a technical jump – could never go on and on. Boxing was a disappointment here but, after all of the fighters from Tokyo turned professional, they are in a transitional period. On the upside, athletics and rowing have taken significant steps forward since Tokyo.
“We need to keep improving – other people have learned what we’ve done, and they make it harder for us to win medals,” said Anson. “The brilliant model of lottery funding and government funding that goes into UK Sport is being replicated.”
The BOA, who are responsible for funding the team around Games time, have achieved huge success with the Team GB brand and commercial partners will again ensure outstanding preparations and conditions immediately before and during LA. State-of-the-art sports facilities at Stanford University in California have already been secured.
UK Sport, who distribute money to the sports’ governing bodies via National Lottery and public funding, are now in talks with the Government over a settlement that they want to reflect the considerable inflationary pressures of the past three years. Dame Katherine Grainger, the chair of UK Sport, described 65 medals across 18 sports as “extraordinary” and hopes that Keir Starmer’s personal visit will help persuade the new Government of the value of investing in both elite and grass-roots sports.
“We also know it’s a tough time financially in the UK and we have to really showcase – that’s why it’s incredible having fantastic athlete ambassadors as well,” said Grainger, herself a five-times Olympic medallist.
“It’s not just their performances here that have an impact. When they go back home, they go back home into their communities. What you get from sport is quite extraordinary and different from anything else. We need investment into local facilities. It’s not an either or. We need to make sure that the opportunities are there for anyone.”
GB athletes ‘can unite country’
With Glasgow increasingly expected to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, and cricket and squash among the new sports for LA, there is also a feeling that external factors should be in Team GB’s favour. With talks over UK Sport funding ongoing, Anson said that Olympic athletes genuinely had a transformative potential to unify communities.
“The team has really united all four corners of the country,” he said. “We’ve got to be aware of what’s happened at home and the tough times that are going on. I hope that Team GB, and these amazing athletes, can have a positive impact and actually help things improve because they are brilliantly humble people from every community.”
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