The chair of UK Sport, Katherine Grainger, has hailed Britain’s medal tally at the Paris Olympics but admitted “there’s a bit of work to do” to improve on their gold count.
Team GB met the Olympic funding agency’s target of 50 to 70 medals, winning 65, one more than their final tally in Tokyo three years ago. But 14 gold medals, their worst return in 20 years, meant the British team finished seventh in the table, dropping three spots from the previous Games.
“We’ve got a strategic ambition to be in the top five,” Grainger told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. “We were just below that this time but we always knew that between three and eight is very congested, very tight. One or two gold medals either way will shift you quite a few places up or down.
“The main thing we’ve seen is we normally have around a 30% conversion rate [to medals that are gold],” said Grainger. “We were a bit below that this time so that just means there’s a bit of work to do for all of us who are involved in these various sports and supporting roles. There’s a bit of work in the review now to see are there places where we could have done more or less, or differently.”
In Tokyo, gold accounted for 34% of Team GB’s medals. At Rio 2016, that percentage stood at 40%. At London 2012 it was 45%. Despite highlighting room for improvement Grainger, who won a rowing gold medal 12 years ago, said she was “happy and content that the medal range [of 50-70 medals] was accurate”. She added: “To be at the very top quarter of that is very pleasing and shows our athletes have put on a brilliant show.”
Team GB’s rowers put on a particularly strong display, winning eight medals, including three golds. It marked a stark improvement from the two – a silver and a bronze – won in Tokyo, despite being Britain’s best-funded sport in that Olympic cycle.
“A lot of people assume [investment] is about reward or punishment for immediate results, it’s very much the opposite,” said Grainger. “It’s looking forward for the potential of a sport. Rowing is probably the most obvious example. A lot of people talked about, was it a disappointing return in Tokyo with only two medals out of a sport where you see multiple medals from? And if at that point the decision had been made to say two medals isn’t enough, therefore no funding, then we wouldn’t be seeing the huge success we have seen this time.
“A lot of conversations happened, [British] Rowing was brilliant about assessing their performances, what they thought their athlete potential was, what they thought their ambitions could be for Paris and they’ve delivered eight medals so a brilliant turnaround with Louise Kingsley as their performance director.”
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When asked whether budgets will be scrutinised in sailing and boxing – the former returning two medals, the latter just a bronze for Lewis Richardson in the men’s 71kg category – Grainger replied: “It’s not the budgets so much that get scrutinised, all parts of the programme will get scrutinised. The national governing bodies who run the sport want to do that as much as any investment body would want to do that.
“These are performance people, these are people who want to produce great results, want to maximise the potential of athletes. When there are some frustrations or some disappointments, or some areas where we think we were surprised there wasn’t more, then there’s an interesting piece of work to be done.”