And so, tomorrow, the Olympic Games begin. Unless you count the football, rugby sevens, handball and archery which are already underway. Forget the Seine opening ceremony, unless you’re a connoisseur of bombast, and look forward to medals being won in eight different sports on Saturday.
Analysts at Gracenote have bumped up their expectations for Team GB medals in their final set of forecasts. They are now predicting 63 medals, only one fewer than in Tokyo – more than the French hosts, but far fewer of them golds. With the medal table prioritising golds, this would translate into an unchanged fourth place finish behind the USA, China and France. Japan finished third last time in its home Games.
Regular readers will know I’m sceptical about the extent of home advantage this year given French athletes’ recent results in major championships. If Britain had a sports minister – still none announced by Prime Minister Starmer three weeks on from the election – he or she might have liked a bet on medal table superiority in line with previous showy Olympics wagers between politicians. A swim in the Thames versus one in the Seine perhaps? Stomach pumps at the ready.
Bookies odds
The bookies appear to have keyed their odds off the Gracenote forecasts, with a few tweaks. The over/under odds on France golds is currently struck at 24.5; Team GB are at 16.5.
UK Sport has wisely toned down its medal target rhetoric of previous Games, further evidence of the more nuanced approach of its leadership that arrived after Rio 2016. The funding agency says it expects between 50 and 70 medals. Let’s hope the media doesn’t get hung up on where exactly in that range Team GB lands and instead focuses on celebrating each success as it arrives.
I happen to think British athletes will better Gracenote’s forecast of 17 golds, but can only think of one reason why it might be truly important. That’s because as yet it is unclear just what attitude the new Labour administration will adopt with regard to elite sport funding.
It is 20 years since the last Labour government reversed its antipathy to competitive school sports, but the memory of this controversial stance still lingers.
It seems inconceivable that the strategy of funding Britain’s Olympians and Paralympians that has been so successful for so long will be abandoned, but leaders in sport are watching anxiously for any sign that it might be tempered or deprioritised. A sugar rush of Olympic excitement for the public over the next fortnight would be handy at this time of policy flux.
And still they rise
Two athletes I’ll be watching out for: Simone Biles and Cindy Ngamba. Biles’s story is well known, but you might consider eschewing the pageant on the Seine in favour of the fantastic Netflix two-parter Simone Biles Rising. Cameroon-born Ngamba is boxing for the refugees team. Having lived in Britain for 14 years and won three National Championships, she’s a product of both the GB boxing system and the differing attitudes to sexuality across today’s world.
Biles said in her documentary: “I used to always say, ‘do something that scares you every single day,’ and God is like ‘you will. This vault? Every single day. This floor routine? Every single day.’”
Streaming now
Quality Street (de)selection
Time flies. Seven years on from leading UK Athletics, I’ve dropped off the VIP guest list for its Diamond League meeting at the London Stadium that I fought for. More fool me then for not getting my act together soon enough to buy a regular ticket before they sold out. A much-trumpeted sell-out that this year was genuine, unlike 2023’s which had clumps of empty seats on the day.
Watching the excellent afternoon of athletics from my sofa, I was reminded of all that is great about the sport as well as the perennial frustrations of shoe company tyranny and blandness of punditry – how I missed the bite of Michael Johnson and craved more technical analysis (honourable exception, Steve Backley). Memo to the BBC: we don’t need to be told just how hard athletes are trying. We can see that for ourselves.
Like most Olympic sports, track and field is box-of-chocolates entertainment, structured to allow you to dip in and out over the course of a few hours, rewarding you with a variety of flavours. Little wonder the Games themselves work so well on TV, meshing together such treats from across a swathe of sports.
Diamond League
Ticket sales
Ticket sales and British athletes excelling in the sunshine against top class opposition made for a strong start for the new commercial joint venture between UKA, the Great Run Company and the London Marathon. This was launched earlier in the year with the hope that it will turn UKA’s financial fortunes for the better.
We won’t know until the governing body’s statutory accounts are published in autumn 2025 whether last weekend’s showcase meeting broke even after a run of debilitating losses. The well-documented challenge for the three partners is to wring a TV rights fee from the BBC or another broadcaster and secure a headline sponsor. In the past this combination effectively ensured a healthy overall annual profit for UKA; in recent times their absence has crippled it financially. No doubt there were a clutch of potential backers arrayed in those VIP seats on Saturday as Great Run and the London Marathon spun their Rolodexes.
Excellent GB performances at the Diamond League included the women’s sprint relay team, only two of whom were wearing their national (Nike-logoed) kit. The other two, Adidas-backed athletes both, were clearly instructed not to fall into sartorial line. While I was tickled to hear commentator Steve Cram flummoxed by Amy Hunt’s orange top into thinking the Netherlands had sprung into a surprise lead on the third leg, really the shoe companies need to get over themselves for the good of the sport.They may effectively bankroll athletics worldwide, but their power often blinds them to the damage they wreak in exercising it.
As it happens, Team GB will compete in Adidas gear in Paris, so the shoe will be on the other foot there.
Success
What the fig?
And on the subject of Adidas – and risking coming over all Mary Whitehouse – what possessed it to draw up this season’s purple athletics kit with flesh-pink* hip panels?
Would you put your daughter on the track in that, Mrs Worthington? (And don’t get me started on US shot putter Ryan Crouser’s clingy Nike leggings…)
*a colour described by Adidas, ridiculously, as ‘preloved fig’.
*a colour described by Adidas, ridiculously, as ‘preloved fig’
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com