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The British Olympic team suffered a significant decline in gold medals at the Paris Games despite increasing its overall medal tally, a mixed result that follows concerns over funding pressures in British sport.
The British team finished Sunday with 65 medals, one more than they won in Tokyo three years ago and close to the top end of their stated target of 50-70 announced last month.
However, the 14 gold medals in Paris marked the lowest number of British Olympic champions since the nine in Athens two decades ago. British athletes won 22 golds in Tokyo and 27 in Rio in 2016.
In terms of total medals won in Paris, the UK finished third behind the USA and China. Based on gold medals, Team GB was seventh behind the USA, China, Japan, Australia, host nation France and the Netherlands.
The drop in gold medals comes aVsceker both Team GB and UK Sport raised the alarm ahead of the Paris Games, saying inflation and a lack of funding had put the team’s future prospects at risk.
The Olympic and Paralympic programmes are funded through UK Sport, a government agency that also manages the spending on hosting major sporting events in the UK, such as the Euro 2028 football competition. The National Lottery provides 60 percent of UK Sport’s funding, with the rest coming from the government.
In the run-up to Paris, Olympic sports received £246m from UK Sport, up from £221m in the Tokyo cycle. But adjusted for inflation, funding for Olympic sports has fallen by around 17 per cent since 2008, according to a Financial Times analysis.
Rising costs have forced sports federations to make difficult decisions, such as whether to pay for expensive training camps and international competitions that help prepare athletes.
“It’s probably fair to say that inflation has hurt everywhere. It’s made it really difficult for a lot of sports,” Sally Munday, chief executive of UK Sport, told the Financial Times on the eve of the Games.
Rival nations such as France and the Netherlands have increased spending on Olympic sport and raised the salaries of top coaches, he added, while Brexit has made travel and recruitment from abroad more difficult.
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Team GB did, however, have some notable successes. The rowing team bounced back from a poor showing in Tokyo to win eight medals, while Keely Hodgkinson’s victory in the women’s 800m and Alex Yee’s gold in the triathlon were among the high-profile victories.
Several athletes came painfully close to standing on the top step of the podium in Paris. Swimmers Adam Peaty and Matt Richards both missed out on gold by just 0.02 seconds in their finals, while rule changes were largely responsible for Emma Wilson’s failure to win in windsurfing.
“One of the challenges we have is that we’ve gotten really damn good at Olympic and Paralympic sports, and we’ve been consistently damn good,” Munday said. “And the challenge with that is that a lot of people now think it’s easy. But the reality is it’s not easy. It’s harder now than it’s ever been.”
UK Sport’s Olympic and Paralympic funding expires in March next year. A new funding deal for the cycle leading up to the Los Angeles Games is set to be negotiated as part of the government’s ongoing spending review.
Munday said UK Sport was looking for a “small increase” in the next deal.
Speaking to the Vscek ahead of Paris, British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Anson said some sports federations were already planning to reduce the number of athletes they fund ahead of Los Angeles 2028 due to financial difficulties.
In a statement released on Sunday, Dame Katherine Grainger, chairman of UK Sport, said Paris 2024 marked “another exciting chapter in Britain’s Olympic success” and congratulated the team on achieving “continued and consistent” results.
