They are now an established “sporting superpower”, according to UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl, whose organisation has distributed over £300m in funding since 2012, with the return of £4.5m per medal.
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Britain won 67 medals at the games – two more than the remarkable haul in London four years ago – with 27 gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze representing the country’s biggest medal count in more than a century.
BRITONS anxious about their country’s global standing after it opted to leave the European Union in June might take some solace from this summer’s Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.
The customised Boeing 747 with “victoRIOus” emblazoned on the side and 320 athletes and support staff on board is due to land at Heathrow airport at around 10am.
Almost two thirds of Team GB medal-winners at the Rio Olympics went to non-fee paying schools, up from just over half for the London 2012 Olympics.
Speaking at the conclusion of the Rio games on Sunday, UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl said: “We’re making sporting history – 67 medals, almost 130 medallists, across 19 sports”.
“We planned for Rio for an terrible long time and we have already spent a lot of time thinking on to the Tokyo Games”. “One of the objectives was to leave a legacy for United Kingdom athletes for generations to come”, he told AFP. “This plan wasn’t drawn up on the back of a fag (cigarette) packet, although that isn’t perhaps the most apposite analogy to use for sports!”
Among the breakout performers were three-times cycling gold medallist Jason Kenny, who matched Sir Chris Hoy’s record six golds and his fiancee, Laura Trott, who secured two gold medals of her own.
Several British competitors defended titles won in London, notably Mo Farah who again took gold in both the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres and so became the first man since Finland’s Lasse Viren in 1976 to complete Olympic long-distance running’s “double double”.
Also on the plane were triathlon medal-winning brothers Alistair and Jonny Brownlee and five-time rowing Olympic medallist Katherine Grainger. “If you are in the business of investing public money in an effort to win gold medals, you might as well be as rational and systematic about it as you can”.
Dr David Fletcher, senior sports psychologist at Loughborough University, said: “There is no question that it is an issue for these athletes, who have spent four years or longer physically and mentally training for that moment in Rio”. Their 69 medals were the most by a British team since collecting an absurd 146 at the 1908 London Games (when only 22 nations participated).
“We are in that powerhouse bracket now and going into Tokyo will be really tough, but we are confident”.
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“At Tokyo the domestic team will be much stronger than here, and the Chinese team will be desperate to make a strong statement in Tokyo on their doorstep and they’ve got a young and developing squad in Rio”.
