Great Britain set ambitious Rio 2016 target as performance declines

 

The first thing to note is that, as the table below shows, 2012 was an extraordinary year for British sport. Spearheaded by their Olympic performance, Great Britain was the third best sporting country in the world in 2012. Little old Great Britain with its 60 odd million inhabitants beat countries such as China, Germany, France and Brazil.

 

The second thing to note is that it didn't happen overnight. Great Britain made steady progress from 2008, when they came 8^th, to 2012, with improvements each year along the way (with the exception of 2010).

 

In other words, while Great Britain's 2012 Olympic performance was outstanding, it wasn't entirely unexpected given their performances in GSN's Global Cup - especially when you factor in the benefits of being the host nation.

So what do Great Britain's performances since 2012 tell us about their prospects for Rio 2016? The early signs aren't particularly encouraging.

 

In 2013, Great Britain fell back to 6^th best in the world. To be fair, that's the same position they achieved in 2009 at the same stage in the previous Olympic cycle. However, in 2009, they scored 4.0% of the available points versus 3.4% in 2013.

 

In 2014, Great Britain slipped a further place to 7^th with 3.6%. On the plus side this is almost identical to their 2010 performance when they also finished 7^th with 3.5%.

 

However, the picture gets more worrying when one looks at Great Britain's recent performance in world championships in the three sports that gave them the most medals in at London 2012: Cycling (12 medals - 9 on the track and 3 on the road); Rowing (9 medals) and Athletics (6 medals).

Apart from Athletics, results have slumped since 2012 with a particularly worrying result in the 2015 Track Cycling World Championships where Team GB only finished 7^th.

 

We’ll be keeping track of GB’s performance and, with 18 months to go to the 2016 Olympics, it’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions. However, it’s hard not to be concerned that Team GB, without the benefits of hosting, has its work cut out to reach its 2016 target.