Six medals at the Olympic Games is not a bad tally, writes Jason Henderson, but it is a long way off the aspirational target of 11-12 that British Athletics really wants to achieve

If British Athletics is to hit its lofty goal of winning 11-13 medals in 2032, there is much work to be done. The team at those Brisbane Games in 11 years’ time will need lots more medal contenders, far fewer injuries and a gale force wind in its sails.

The target is to effectively double the number of medals in little over a decade’s time, which won’t easy. Neither will the aspiration of fielding British athletes in every single track and field event be straightforward. GB teams historically have had gaps. In Tokyo, for example, there were no Brits in six men’s and five women’s events.

Despite a few critical (and premature) articles in the media knocking the team’s performance in Tokyo, the total medal tally of six is is roughly what the nation usually achieves at the Olympic Games (see table below).

There are several reasons why there were general feelings of dissatisfaction, though.

Most of all, there were no gold medals. This is the first time Britain hasn’t won a track and field title at the Olympics since Atlanta in 1996. As Max Jones, the UK Athletics performance director from 1997 to 2004 used to say: “A gold medal a day keeps the press away.”

Feelings of disgruntlement also grew when big-name gold medal contenders Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson saw their hopes thwarted by injuries. For too many fans, their enduring memory of British performances at these Games will be Asher-Smith’s tearful interviews and Johnson-Thompson refusing to use a wheelchair that was rolled out to her when she pulled up injured in her 200m race.

To make matters worse, Italy won an amazing five gold medals. Arguably even more impressive was Poland, who took four golds and nine medals in total across a diverse range of events from hammer throwing to 800m to mixed relay to race walking.

Netherlands, too, were impressive with eight medals and two golds, although a little like Britain at recent Games with Mo Farah, the Dutch relied heavily on Sifan Hassan.

In the same way athletics fans were keen to know “the secrets” of Swedish success during the Scandinavian country’s golden era of Carolina Kluft, Stefan Holm, Kajsa Bergqvist and Christian Olsson about 15-16 years ago, no doubt there will now be plenty of analysis of the Italian and Polish successes.

The true guide of the health of an athletics nation, however, has always been the placings table. Here eight points are given to a winner with seven points to the runner-up right down to one point for an eighth-placed athlete.

United States topped this table easily with 263 points from Jamaica on 106 and Kenya on 104. Poland was fourth with 74, then Canada with 70, Netherlands on 68, China on 67 and Britain on 65. A little lower down, Germany and Italy both had 50 points, which shows that behind Italy’s five winners there weren’t many finalists relatively speaking.

If you still think Britain had a bad Games, incidentally, then consider that Sweden (yes, the nation everyone looked up to not long ago) scored only 27 points, France just 26 and South Africa 8.

ATHLETICS PLACING TABLE

1⃣ USA
2⃣ Jamaica
3⃣ Kenya
4⃣ Poland
5⃣ Canada
6⃣ Netherlands
7⃣ China
8⃣ Great Britain & NI
9⃣ Ethiopia
🔟 Australia #Athletics #Olympics pic.twitter.com/RDOvtU02qG

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) August 9, 2021

For Britain, even some of the worst performance offered hope too. Take the men’s 4x400m, for instance. They ran almost two seconds slower in their heat than the silver-medal winning GB team anchored by Robbie Brightwell on a cinder track in Tokyo in 1964. It sounds dire, but the squad was deliberately young and sent to Tokyo for experience.

“It’s an invaluable opportunity for us all to get to run here and show us what we’re up against and what we’re going to be up against over the coming years,” said one of the quartet, Cameron Chalmers. “I think that’s something to really go away with and keep firmly at the front of your mind when you’re working hard at winter training over the next few years to make Paris a success.”

Team-mate Lee Thompson added: “It’s an Olympic Games so it’s the pinnacle of our sport. We’ve just got to learn how good it is at the top level and we all need to raise our game individually and come together as a group, to be fighting for those medals and get up to the top of the world, because that’s where we need to be and where we’ve always been in the past.

“We need to get back to being a feared country, a feared team, and we will do. Sometimes you just need that to learn and grow.”

So what does British Athletics need to do now ahead of Paris 2023, Paris 2028 and Brisbane 2032?

Head coach Christian Malcolm needs more time clearly. He has only been in the job for a matter of months and performance director Sara Symington hasn’t been in her post for much longer.

They need to decide – once and for all – whether to “fill the teams” and send athletes to championships for experience, or to do the opposite and send high-quality teams full of medal contenders in order to keep standards high. The latter approach was used by Charles van Commenee in the run-up to London 2012 and, as he said, “you don’t jump higher by lowering the bar”.

However at present there seems no clear strategy. Relay runners like the aforementioned 4x400m men are sent to the Games when they clearly have no chance of winning a medal and yet others who received World Athletics invitations were left out.

Injuries need to be addressed. Not surprisingly the team appeared “healthier” and less injury-prone when the performance director was Neil Black – a man whose background of course was as a physiotherapist.

Despite Lottery funding and an emphasis on creating UK-based training centres that have world-class athlete support systems, leading athletes still travel abroad to seek help from medics like Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt in Germany.

Injuries aside, British Athletics is losing athletes to other sports as well. As young runners, Georgia Taylor-Brown and Alex Yee appeared in the pages of AW every bit as much as Asher-Smith and KJT but they won individual silver medals and team golds in Tokyo in the sport of triathlon.

Emily Campbell competed in the discus and hammer at the English Schools Championships and as recently as five years ago ranked eighth in the UK in the shot put. Yet in Tokyo she became the first British woman to win an Olympic medal in weightlifting with silver.

At least these athletes stayed in sport and enjoyed success. Each year dozens of young athletes who have won national medals simply disappear after struggling with injuries, illness or simply growing disinterested. It is a major problem which successive governing bodies have failed to get to grips with and, if solved, would go some way to helping to achieve the lofty 11-13 medals goal in 2032.

To end on a positive note, let’s applaud the shining lights from the 2020 Games. Keely Hodgkinson, Laura Muir and Josh Kerr showed the growing strength of British middle-distance running and all three have the ability to win global gold in 2022, whereas others like Jemma Reekie and Jake Wightman are hot on their heels.

Holly Bradshaw came of age with a brilliant bronze. Sprinters such as Zharnel Hughes, Adam Gemili, CJ Ujah, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake and Reece Prescod will be back stronger next year and let’s not forget the 4x100m gold was only lost by a mere one hundredth of a second.

Daryll Neita and Jodie Williams were a revelation. There were British records from Lizzy Bird in the steeplechase and in the women’s 4x100m, plus of course the women’s 800m and 1500m.

Pole vaulter Harry Coppell, hammer thrower Nick Miller and long jumper Jazmin Sawyers also impressed. Others have had a great 12 months but were simply not at their best in Tokyo. Marc Scott and Scott Lincoln spring to mind.

British Athletics can continue to draw hope from age-group events too. At the European Under-20 Championships in Tallinn last month the medals table was topped by Britain with six golds and 12 medals ahead of Germany with four golds and 15 medals.

The challenge now is to patiently convert those prodigiously talented teenagers into the Olympic medallists of tomorrow.

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