Per the BBC: "Great Britain have finished second in the Rio 2016 medal table - above China for the first time. China are one of the Games' dominant nations, with more than 200 gold medals since debuting in 1984. Britain has 27 golds to China's 26 and their superior haul of silvers - 22 to 18 - means China cannot overtake them with only one more athlete in action. Boxer Joe Joyce fights for gold on Sunday, meaning Britain are guaranteed to improve on that tally. The British team have won golds across 15 sports in Rio, and have a total of 66 medals in 19 sports - beating the total of 65 at London 2012. They have become the first host nation to improve their medal total at the next Games."
It's a fantastic achievement by our athletes out there, as many of them have said lottery funding has helped them, long may it continue! Next target is to beat the US
The "danger" now is that other Countries will try and copy/follow our processes and systems. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
But as long as funding is there then it helps us progress beyond what others try and come up with. This has been 12 years or more in the making , I can't see other countries catching up right now, though if anyone can the Chinese can, they on the face of it could have an almost unlimited budget.
Thinking that winning 67 medals, of which 27 were gold is a fantastic achievement, what a competition this was, looking forward now to Tokyo 2020 next with some optimism that we can do better. Well done to all the athletes who made it work
Shame Joyce didn't win but what an amazing games for us. My Aussie contacts tell me there's an inquest Down Under in the media. Lots of talk about lottery funding.
Well it clearly works for us, we have increased our tally in each of the last 3 Olympics Athens 2004 - 30 medals - 9 gold Lottery funding for elite sports Beijing 2008 - 47 medals - 19 gold London 2012 - 65 medals - 29 gold Rio 2016 - 67 medals - 27 gold
This was from yesterday I think as its today's newspaper UK Sport has ploughed £274million of Lotto cash into our athletes’ programme in the last four years. Its director of performance, Simon Timson, said: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/athletics/rio-2016-britains-golden-age-8679943
Watch some of the funding now go up. Swimming had a drastic cut on money, this is one sport that will get a big rise.
£274 million in 4 years is a massive amount of money But if you strip that down, I suppose it's only about £1 per head of the population per year.