How did Britain suddenly get so good at Summer Olympics?
Posted by orpheus1980@reddit | AskABrit | View on Reddit | 107 comments
Since Beijing 2008, Britain has been very impressive at the summer Olympics. The Britain of my childhood got maybe a handful of medals. The idea of Britain getting more medals than Germany was laughable. But now it's like a different equation!
I am sure hosting the 2012 Olympics played a huge role in this. But it's now over a dozen years since those games and Britain does generally seem to punch above its weight in the medals table.
What went into this?
Questingcloset@reddit
The national lottery. It's provided a huge amount of funding.
BillWilberforce@reddit
To be honest despite the Lottery's flaws, scratch card addicts. It has done some amazing things and probably one of the best things that John Major did. As he said that there are things that should be funded like the village cricket/football pitch having a changing rooms that are usable, money spent on the arts....... But in government they never got funded as it was always a choice of an all weather playing pitch for a school versus a new kidney dialysis machine for the NHS. With the kidney dialysis machine always winning. There was just never any money for the nice but not essential things. Until the lottery came along.
The_Flurr@reddit
Fairly likely that lottery buyers would still gamble anyway. At least the money goes to some good things.
fieldsofanfieldroad@reddit
I bet you they wouldn't
rubygloommel@reddit
I feel people may be missing the joke 😅
Questingcloset@reddit
Definitely a woosh moment here!
TheHess@reddit
Betting outside of the lottery is, of course, non existent.
The_Flurr@reddit
Thr existence of non-national lotteries suggests otherwise.
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
Interesting. Channeling the national love of a flutter towards sports funding. Great idea.
tremynci@reddit
Not just sports: the National Lottery Heritage Fund is easily in the top 3 funders of museums and archives, if not the single biggest.
Citation: I'm a local authority archivist.
Immorals1@reddit
Yep. Our services would collapse without heritage funding. Councils don't have the money!
AlGunner@reddit
Thats only a small part of it. There was also a lot of other investment ahead of London 2012 so we would do better at a home Olympics. They did a good job of marketing and selling advertising as well to bring in more money. As a legacy there has been more money for athletics and a lot of athletes are now professional where they used to be amateur so they can train full time and we are seeing the rewards of that with more medals.
MerlinOfRed@reddit
It really shows the difference that money makes.
When you're at the top level, being able to train as your full-time job really makes all the difference.
EasternCut8716@reddit
Yes, but I think combined with political will and focus?
Was in 2004 where the UK were really bad? By focussing funding where there would be a return (i.e., cycling rather than paying posh people to having ski-ing holidays) and more funding things had turned around by 2008 and 2012 was a great year.
osberton77@reddit
1996 was the worst, one gold for rowing 🚣 there was a steady improvement from 2000 in Sydney.
odysseusnz@reddit
Money. Lots of money, spent in the right places, with a hard focus on talent spotting and results.
Onagan98@reddit
You found Great Britain good at the 2024 Olympics? Laughs in Dutch…
Profession-Unable@reddit
What do you mean? The Netherlands gained one more gold medal but 31 less overall medals.
Onagan98@reddit
Gold is all that matters
Profession-Unable@reddit
What a load of rubbish. Even looking just at gold, laughing from the position of merely one more medal is very high and mighty of you.
Onagan98@reddit
With less than a third of the population, don’t forget that part as well.
Shitelark@reddit
Our wheels are rounder.
Prudent_Night_9787@reddit
We focused on sports involving horses, boats and bicycles
Powerful-Reason-6319@reddit
Money
Existing_Macaron_616@reddit
We pay to win sports you need money to be good at like cycling and rowing. I think how we fund sport is ridiculous in this country. We end up paying posh people to play posh sports rather than put money into coaching and facilities that a large amount of people enjoy. I would use a rowers wage to train up a load of football coaches at grassroots who give up their free time etc, put them on a decent coaching course instead.
Similar_Quiet@reddit
You'd think with all of the billions floating around top level football that they could take care of the grassroots themselves
Existing_Macaron_616@reddit
Why’s there billions floating about? Cos it’s the sport people care most about.
Similar_Quiet@reddit
Sure, but I think there's a thing to be said for subsidising minority sports.
To draw an analogy, I'd rather subsidise independent shops rather than Tesco. A local theatre over Cineworld and real ale breweries over Carling.
mr_iwi@reddit
They really could, they just don't feel like it
rising_then_falling@reddit
Only about half of our Paris 24 medals were from 'equipment' disciplines, and that's counting things with pretty affordable equipment - golf, skateboard, shooting etc.
Existing_Macaron_616@reddit
Golf 😂
deusxm@reddit
There's actually a whole BBC documentary series dedicated to explaining this
As others have said, it largely came from the embarrassment of the 1996 Olympics. To anyone who's British, it should come as no surprise that we initially completely failed to adapt to the Olympics going professional (Britain historically had a romantic attachment to the idea of the 'plucky amateur' over the idea of competing as a job), and so things were made to change pretty quickly.
The launch of the National Lottery also essentially created a huge pool of previously unavailable money to help fund things too.
MelloCookiejar@reddit
The whole plucky amateur thing always sounded like an excuse from governments. With the absolute focus on football (not as bad here as in other european countries but still pretty bad), they kind of expected/hoped everyone else to do it as a hobby and find it themselves. Would have been a convenient "going to the olympics should be the reward" excuse.... then they found out it doesn't work.
Toffeeman_1878@reddit
Professionalism was frowned upon by the British establishment in the early days of sporting development. It was seen as something crass and grubby which only lower class people would stoop to undertake. The establishment were in charge of administering many British sports bodies until recently. Even today, the good and the great still have influence over the running of many British sports.
MelloCookiejar@reddit
Well, rich people were rich enough to do it without working. It's like the time where politicians weren't paid, or currently, unpaid internships.
deusxm@reddit
It's not so much as an excuse from government as an explanation of the low level of pressure in the early 90s to properly fund sport. If you'd suggested to people in the early 90s that we should spend millions of pounds to help a bloke on a bike ride round a circle 10 seconds quicker so he could win a medal at the Olympics, you would have been laughed at.
There just wasn't the recognition of the economic boost delivered by elite sport. No-one seemed to realise that big coporations would then spend millions to associate their products with athletes, generating more sales and jobs here, or that investing loads in building new sports facilities would drive growth in the construction industry, encourage R&D etc. You could also argue that the cutting back of social facilities in the 1980s directly restricted our ability to train elite athletes who'd be eligible to compete in the early to mid-90s - and that these social facilities were cut back because the govenrment of the time simply hadn't anticipated how sport and capitalism could intersect. Don't forget, government was even more dominated by public schoolboys than it is today, who'd all grown up thinking of professional sport as something quite vulgar and common.
We'd only just started to get an idea of the revenue generation thanks to the launch of the Premier League. Sure, football was decent money in the 80s but until 1995, the biggest transfer fee ever paid by an English club was £1.5m, a record set in 1981. Then in a period of less than 2 years (1995-1996), it went to £7m and then 15m.
By the mid-90s, it was finally starting to dawn on people and governments that sport was big business. 1996 simply confirmed it.
StevieJax77@reddit
Funding from the lottery. And a focus on “bang for your buck” - if a rower can compete for 4 medals but a pole vaulter just 1, the rower gets the cash. Hence the performance in rowing, cycling, running events can often double-up.
Solsbeary@reddit
Increased funding as we hosted the 2012 games and didn't want to be an embarrassment with home advantage.
KTDWD24601@reddit
Success begets success.
Partly because of the inspiration and belief - and partly because the knowledge of how to train well to be successful gets passed on through generations of coaches.
Take Diving, for example. In the 90s divers trained exclusively in the pool. That was it. Now they have whole training programmes on dry land with specialist strength coaches, expert sports nutritionists helping them with their diet, and sports psychologists.
bananabastard@reddit
I'm pretty sure I watched a documentary about this.
Exact_Setting9562@reddit
The National Lottery has done a very poor job of its work if you don't know how much that's helped.
cinejam@reddit
We spent 3.8 million pounds per medal in Paris.
Paulstan67@reddit
Huge sums of money are thrown at it (pun intended).
The government is spending £900 million of taxpayer's money on this and there is funding from the lottery "good causes"
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/game-changer-for-the-nation
General-Elephant4970@reddit
Global warming has made British summers longer. So more practice, innit? /joke
nasu1917a@reddit
Weren’t their cyclists caught doping? Presumably a rapid spike at the same time in other sports would indicate that strategy was embraced on a wider scale.
Delicious_Link6703@reddit
Going off at a very big tangent, I was a volunteer games maker at London 2012 main stadium in Stratford. It was and still is the top highlight of my life.
halfmanhalfvan@reddit
Mate, you and every single other games maker were the best part about the whole thing
Delicious_Link6703@reddit
Thank you. We worked hard but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. It was perfect, all went smoothly.
For me it was a family affair. My brother was on duty for the London Fire Brigade, one of my nephews, a police officer, worked shifts there and another nephew, a qualified electrician, was there mainly to deal with any electrical issues at the Athletes Village.
QuietVisit2042@reddit
Yes, but Britain only does well at events that involve sitting down. Cycling, horse riding, rowing, sailing, kayaking etc
Acrobatic-Pudding-87@reddit
Even if it were true, I don’t really understand the point here. Is the implication that seated sports are somehow lesser sports? Olympic rowers have the greatest lung capacity of any athletes. They are incredibly fit. Their leg muscles are also insane. Cyclists are also monsters. Have you seen a pro cyclist’s thighs? They’re like my waist.
ODFoxtrotOscar@reddit
The point?
It’s a very well known joke, that appears to have gone straight over the heads of some posters
QuietVisit2042@reddit
It appears a lot of folks here have no sense of humor
Infinite_Crow_3706@reddit
Those sports are also reliant on equipment technology, so we're are back to investment as a significant factor.
Acrobatic-Pudding-87@reddit
They are, though I think most Olympians in those sports got into them first and got funding later. Rowers usually come through the university system, sailors from sailing towns (Ben Ainslie is from Lymington near where I grew up), equestrian riders typically come from horsey backgrounds, etc. Their funding enables them to train full-time rather than funds their entry into the sport.
AlGunner@reddit
Massive investment for London 2012 and after.
ignatiusjreillyXM@reddit
Funding from the National Lottery (which was established in the mid-1990s), and a conscious decision by successive governments to make sport a priority, in short.
Furicist@reddit
Honestly, speaking as a former coach for a winter Olympic sport (development pathway, not the podium team), the summer gets a lot more funding because they're more prevalent in the UK, which is understandable.
Also, our general understanding of exercise science and athletic performance is very good. Many nations simply don't have exercise scientists and S&C coaches on hand of the calibre that are available in the UK.
Physios, sports rehab therapists, sports psychologists, all available and all very capable.
It makes a huge difference to the athletes career.
69Dark_light69@reddit
We smash alot of sports that involved sitting down. Rowing, cycling, equestrian. And it's national lottery funding aswell we can do alot more than before
hime-633@reddit
Money, money, money...
Alexander-Wright@reddit
It's so funny,
Professional_Sea1479@reddit
It’s a rich man’s game.
DAC86@reddit
Potential achievement from natural talent and complementary genetics is limited if you also need to work a day job
Electronic-Stay-2369@reddit
Decent funding has helped.
HarissaPorkMeatballs@reddit
We're also most excellent at the Paralympics. Second place in the medal table for the last three games.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
Having a lot of fit young people who lost limbs when serving in the Army helps too.
HarissaPorkMeatballs@reddit
I don't think many of our most successful paralympic athletes are ex-forces.
Fridarey@reddit
Money
Flat-Ad8256@reddit
Money. We invest loads in elite athlete development and that is performance related. Sports that keep on winning will keep on getting money. Those that struggle will lose it.
snapper1971@reddit
It wasn't "suddenly" those athletes trained hard and constantly. Claiming it was "sudden" is a slap in the face of all of them.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
We got one gold in 1996 which jumped to 11 in 2000 and has grown since, funding is the absolute key as it allowed what were previously amateurs basically to be able to train full time. A 9-5 job gets in the way of that somewhat.
mralistair@reddit
cash.
the difference to an athlete of being able to train full time without needing a full time job is a massive advantage.
plus better facilities from the lottery and for london a pretty ruthless "medals first" approach to funding and support.
the history is fascinating. i read chris boardman's book which covered his time there.
Ilsluggo@reddit
In addition to lottery funding, it’s important to recognize the contributions of immigrants to the medal count. Don’t have data for the last two games, but this report from 2012:
More than a third of Britain’s London 2012 Olympic medal winners were born abroad or had a foreign parent or grandparent.
*Researchers studying our most successful Games team in more than a century found immigration was a factor in least 24 of the 65 medals won by Team GB.
The analysis of podium places, by British Future, a think tank, found at least 11 gold medals, three silvers and 10 bronzes were won by athletes whose immediate family came to Britain from overseas.*
Source: https://www.nazlegacy.org/london-2012-olympics-third-of-team-gb-medals-won-by-immigrants/
Otherwise_Craft9003@reddit
Money was thrown at it, which the nick Ferraris and right wing media will keep telling you doesn't work.
notacanuckskibum@reddit
Has it really changed? Weren’t we always around 3rd to 5 th in medal count. Clearly not in the top two (used to be USA and USSR) but competing with Germany, France and China for who is next.
smcl2k@reddit
In the early days, yes. But from WWII to the 2000s, even getting into the top 10 was an achievement (with 36th in 1996 being a spectacular low point).
Our run from 2008 to 2020 (4th, 3rd, 2nd, 4th) was actually our best since the period either side of WWI (1st, 3rd, 3rd, 4th).
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
Can you imagine if in 1992, someone told you that in 20 years, Britain would handily be getting more Olympic medals than a unified Germany.
Infinite_Crow_3706@reddit
It was always a matter of hard cash.
There's a strong correlation to Olympic medals and the money invested in the particular sports. Many countries allocate funding this way.
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
True. USA is up there because of all the NCAA money.
smcl2k@reddit
The NCAA is an interesting outlier in that it develops young athletes regardless of which countries they represent, whereas most countries have development programs which are geared entirely towards developing their own competitors.
Obviously the vast majority of Olympic-level alums compete for the US, but there are some very high profile exceptions... Mondo Duplantis has been vaulting for Sweden since long before he attended LSU, and a large number of female soccer players from around the world (including multiple Lionesses and Spain's Alexia Putellas - 1 of the greatest women's players in history) have played for US colleges.
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
I heard this insane statistic that just 4 universities in California have over a 1000 Olympic medals between them!
randomusername8472@reddit
There's some really fun facts when you break it down to region or establishment (although it obviously comes from the fact that most sports people are coming through training programmes at places that specialise so.. where else would they come from?)
I can't remember which Olympics but there was a funny one that Yorkshire (northern region of the UK) had more medals than Austalia.
Infinite_Crow_3706@reddit
Yep, the NCAA style system is unique to the USA but the principle of more funding = more success is much the same across the globe.
smcl2k@reddit
It's also about spotting specific opportunities and exploiting them, like Indonesia has when it comes to speed climbing.
kliq-klaq-@reddit
Nah we hovered between 10th and 15th for most of the post-war games and had a shocker at 96 dropping to 36th.
notacanuckskibum@reddit
FWIW some countries, including the USA, rank counties by total medal count (irrelevant of colour) rather than 1 gold beats any number of silver etc. We did better by that system. British athletes often got to the final, but rarely won.
smcl2k@reddit
In 1996, the "total count" model still put GB in 19th place.
kliq-klaq-@reddit
Total medal count means we have hovered from 8th to 15th then.
Ill-Trash-7085@reddit
notice though that we're mainly good at sports that require machines or vehicles. Bikes, boats, etc. Sports that need money, equipment and science, thus cutting out poorer nations as viable competitors.
Prestigious_Use_1305@reddit
The crown commonwealth games can sometimes really highlight the difference in this where a lot of the poorer countries competitors have a chance to qualify where they don't make the cut for the Olympics.
Remember watching the track cycling and the commentators being stunned that there was a guy turning up with a bike that had brakes and spoked wheels. (a proper track bike has no brakes and disk wheels) . Its not a level plating field.
cmfarsight@reddit
we looked at the sports you can win using money, and spent money
Working-Response1126@reddit
Looking how we did in the world championships, we will be falling down the tables in the next Olympics.
We placed 7th.
Possible-Highway7898@reddit
Do you mean the athletics world championship? British success at the Olympics has not come from dominating track and field. We will never be able to consistently compete with countries like the USA, Jamaica, Kenya etc. Their youth setup and culture is so much more professional than ours, and their talent pool is light years ahead.
British success at the Olympics has come from targeted funding of elite athletes in minority sports, and the philosophy of marginal gains in unoptimised sports. That is not going to work in track and field, it's too popular and too optimised.
AutisticAllotmenter@reddit
Honestly for some of it - doping. Particularly in cycling.
kliq-klaq-@reddit
The short answer is funding for 2012 that started after the embarrassment of 96 and fed into the early 00s with Manchester commonwealth games and then into the London bid.
The longer answer is super focused and strategic funding via the national lottery in things like cycling, rowing etc where there are high medal tallies.
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
Why am I not surprised that it is linked to the Brit love of gambling 😄.
smcl2k@reddit
Just wait until you see how much Americans spend on lottery tickets...
orpheus1980@reddit (OP)
Oh I know haha. We are a colony after all.
snapper1971@reddit
Some of you are more colon though.
MrMonkeyman79@reddit
Massive amounts of targeted investment in sports and systems that identify and develop potential top tier athletes.
Once these systems are in place they become easier to sustain.
ODFoxtrotOscar@reddit
Very much this. Huge sums on the sports they thought we were good at, and could win medals in
Next to nothing if your sport wasn’t on that golden track.
Used-Needleworker719@reddit
I think it was very much a plan considering the bid for London 2012. They put a lot of effort into grassroots sport which is why a lot of the medalists in Rio said they only started their sport post 2012.
Interestingly now they’ve cut a lot of funding and that was seen at the world athletics championships, so god knows what will happen at the next olympics
ramirezdoeverything@reddit
The UK aggressively funds athletes and sports where they have a reasonable chance of winning medals, and funding outside of this top tier dramatically drops off. Countries like France on the other hand are a lot less targeted with their funding and spread their funding far thinner over more athletes and sports, and therefore don't support their top talent as well as the UK does. The result is the UK wins a lot of medals but it could be argued the grassroots of sports suffers as the funding doesn't trickle down much below the top tier. This is a deliberate strategy on the UK's part which started sometime in the 2000s I believe.
Pier-Head@reddit
Lottery funding helped
Effective_Quality@reddit
Hosting the Olympics in 2012 was the backbone of having money pumped into the sports.
massie_le@reddit
Marginal gains
Yakitori_Grandslam@reddit
Money
qualityvote2@reddit
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