Laura muir, that was brave. Miles behind after that mad 800 at the start Olympic record there. 2 seconds off the world record kipyegon was pure power.
Forget what I said about USA and China no longer winning 40+ gold medals. Cause the Athletics for USA and China sweeping Diving and Table Tennis have destroyed that idea. Rest of the world needs to step up again in 4 years, cause its dull seeing China and USA dominate so easily.
Hard to step up when the population and money they put into it just massively outweigh everyone else.
Serious efforts and blocking in the women's marathon. The Ethiopian tried 3 times to cut across hassan to try and block her and trip here up potentially. On hassan went for it and was level she went into her again. That's history right there.
Unfortunately the track cycling has flattered to deceive. Gold on the first day had people feeling it'd be a GB gold rush. Always in the races just always someone better (the Dutch it seems) Wonder if they'll make some changes in the coming 4 years. And before anyone thinks to bring up money and funding. GB are probably the best funded Cycling team at the Olympics
I think we are seeing the pick up from the French in this Olympics where vsdt money goes in as soon as the won the games tonensure they had athletes. We are seeing the Japanese 3 years on still there and developed. It's now 12 years since london and you have to question if the level of investment is there any more.
The Cycling team get more money now than they have ever had. Paris £26m Tokyo £24m London £20m The host team always sees a pick up in medals, so expect USA to destroy everyone in 4 years time. But seeing as Boxing isn't in the next Olympics (so far) that'll be £11m freed up.
https://www.uksport.gov.uk/our-work/investing-in-sport/historical-funding-figures Doesn't have this current cycle of funding, but a quick google can find that.
£20m in 2012 is worth about £28m now so in real terms the funding hasn’t gone up, gone down if anything.
But in real terms 26 is a bigger number than 20. So they get more funding now than ever Really 2012 should be ignored. Home games means higher funding across the board for any host nation, it's a anomaly in the statistics. Still doesn't take away from the fact that GB won 2 golds in Cycling (1 Track, 1 mountain). A fair few other medals, but it says they haven't found the next Hoy, Kenny or Trott (Kenny) Some of the other sports have suffered similar fates as well. Rowing hasn't fully recovered from the Tokyo disaster, Boxing & Hockey have been a **** show, Gymnastics hasn't pushed on with its initial success, Athletics is probably back to where it was pre2012. All of these are the big earners in terms of funding.
Infrastructure is well established now compared to 2012, so doesn't have to go as far. And as mentioned, 2012 should be ignored as it was a Home games in terms of funding. There was always going to be a higher rate of money put towards everything for 2012. Still doesn't change the fact that 26 is a bigger number than 20. That is a fair point on the womens side. The Men, medals won but miles behind the Dutch.
we went into this games with only one really stand out rider in Archibald and ones like Finucane who are breaking through .It might have helped if there weren't so many crashes as well While the finance helps you still need the talent and ,that needs to be coming thru at the right time in the cycle of events plus quite a bit of that has been headhunted by the road teams
In terms of a purely funding aspect, and alot of GB's funding allocations is based on medal prospects, its seems crazy that around £30m is spent on Boxing, Judo and Taekwondo. Three sports where your athlete could be out after one match. One bad day/morning/few minutes and that's it... done. Obviously the success in these sports has brought higher funding But in terms of a risk/reward strategy I'm not sure it'd be a choice most would make.
It's an odd one as cycling requires triple and quadruple the athletes and then requires a big velodrome.and training facility and of course high tech expensive equipment. Boxing and the rest doesn't need much of that. It needs some facilities, some coachs and a small amount of kit relatively. The cost of.moving bikes alone to various meets and international events must be huge. You are in the end paying a living wage to athletes and coaches as well. Having people in the diving, swimming, track.and field does give you.a lot of spare events and second chances that the other sports don't have but they can all.be put after one bad performance. The issue with boxing is that there's a huge amount of fixing going on. There were many. Outs there that judges walked in closed their eyes and just handed results to their own continent or whoever had paid them most. There were matches with one and two judges who were disgraceful in the early rounds imo. Boxing deserves to be out of the Olympics for that but this was an Olympic event and it was being fixed just the same as it was in rio where it was rampant and that's 8 years ago. At least the taekwando fixed itself with electronic scoring after being debacle.
