Members of Team GB pose for pictures as they arrive back home. Photo: Steve Parsons / PA Wire/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. Team GB’s second place in the Rio medals table is nothing less than staggering. It is only 20 years ago that the squad returned with a solitary gold from Atlanta ’96 clinging on to 36th in the table. This sporting nation is now ranked alongside the Olympian superpowers of USA and China. If it hadn’t been for the partial International Olympic Committee ban on their competitors, Russia would have been in the mix too, but this still remains a remarkable Team GB medal haul.
Unlike the football World Cup, the Olympics medal table is by and large an indicator of global economic and political power. When it comes to the Olympics, the more you have to plough into sport facilities and training for promising young athletes, the better you’re likely to do. Conversely, the superpower nations of USA, China and Russia have not come close to claiming a single men’s Football World Cup title between them. The Olympics is a different story. So how has Great Britain, not a superpower in the same league, ended up on top of the olympic pile?
20 years ago, as well as Atlanta '96, there was also Euro '96. This England's last semi-final appearance at a tournament. Scotland went out at the group stage, and apart from in France '98, have failed to qualify since. Wales and Northern Ireland each had magnificent campaigns this summer, but apart from that their records have been pretty dismal. For a sport that (despite all the evidence) we still like to think we dominate, the contrast with Team GB's recovery over those same two decades is startling.
