Team GB have been among the top five in the Olympic medals table at every Games since Beijing in 2008 and, while chef de mission Mark England did say last year that “the wheels are going to have to come off” for that not to again happen, there is a belief that having the third-highest overall tally provides significant mitigation.
“I think it’s hard to feel like that,” said Anson. “It’s this continual fine tuning, figuring out what can be done better to move forward. When you win in 18 different sports, something is going very right as well and we’ve got to celebrate that.”
It could sound rather desperate to start mentioning luck or too many freakishly close finishes but, having so often been on the right side of fine margins in 2016 and 2021, there were certainly an unusually high number of agonising moments in Paris. Adam Peaty’s Covid, Kate French’s illness and Katie Archibald’s broken leg were all cited by Anson – and Peaty, Matt Richards, Josh Kerr, Matthew Hudson-Smith, Emma Wilson, Amber Rutter and Katarina Johnson-Thompson were all within fractions of gold.
Rivals have learnt from Team GB success
But there are also wider forces at work. Australia, who took UK Sport’s respected performance director Chelsea Warr shortly before the Tokyo Games, have now also recruited Mel Marshall, the inspiration behind Peaty, and are building impressively towards Brisbane in 2032. Many nations, including the French and Dutch, have taken direct learnings from how Britain became an Olympic super power and, only this weekend, representatives from India were picking Anson’s brains.
Such a glut of golds in sports like sailing and cycling – where Team GB had also taken a technical jump – could never go on and on. Boxing was a disappointment here but, after all of the fighters from Tokyo turned professional, they are in a transitional period. On the upside, athletics and rowing have taken significant steps forward since Tokyo.
“We need to keep improving – other people have learned what we’ve done, and they make it harder for us to win medals,” said Anson. “The brilliant model of lottery funding and government funding that goes into UK Sport is being replicated.”
The BOA, who are responsible for funding the team around Games time, have achieved huge success with the Team GB brand and commercial partners will again ensure outstanding preparations and conditions immediately before and during LA. State-of-the-art sports facilities at Stanford University in California have already been secured.