Other - Rest of the World Olympics 2024

[tonyw]

So final reckoning.....total number of medals (65, 3rd overall) - great; number of different sports to medal in (18) - great; number of golds (14, 7th overall) - really disappointing. In the end, not only did Japan & Australia finish miles ahead, and France squeak by us at the last.....even the Dutch finished ahead of us in the final reckoning (amazing Olympics for them with a population of less than 20m!).

Slightly concerned from what I'm reading already that Team GB is going to be hailed as conquering heroes, whereas we should be having a bit of an inquest as to why more of those podium places weren't turned into gold. This is not like pre-2008, when we would all clap the plucky British amateurs giving it their all......they are now mostly professionals, paid by the British taxpayer (strictly speaking by the 'People who can't do maths' tax, but opportunity cost and all that......).

Some bronze medals were amazing - Georgia Bell coming back from retirement, and taking 14 seconds off her post-Covid personal best in the 1500m whilst still working a full-time job was stunning; all the diving medals were great too because the Chinese diving factory of 150 dives a day throughout your childhood is probably not something we want to be trying to emulate.

But the Women's 4x100m team? Clearly the fastest team, but bungled two exchanges to let the US pip them - we shouldn't really be praising their silver, but asking why it wasn't gold. Ditto Joe Clarke in the Kayak Cross.....World Champion, won every heat without a sweat, but lost the final to a guy he'd already wiped the floor with in the semis and looked far too happy with his silver medal for my liking. Even Emma Finucane - being hailed as a conquering hero for bringing home three medals from a single games. But she was the sprint World Champion last year, when the podium was the reverse of today. "I feel on top of the world. This whole week has been a rollercoaster for me, so many high and so many lows. That bronze medal felt like a gold medal to me," Well no, it's a bronze medal. It means you finished third and you're not on top of the world actually. Give me Laura Trott's two golds rather than a gold and two bronzes every time.

But maybe I've just been in America too long.....

 

[Matty Greens Left Boot]

Only Americans do total medal counts. Everyone else does golds silvers then bronze's. On that basis we have had our worst Olympics in 20 years winning fewer golds than 2008 and the lowest in the medal table. These are professional athletes and funded as such I expect to see some sports that under achieved to see cuts in funding and we need to do more to target golds. Australia and the Netherlands finished above us with much smaller populations and much smaller funding. It wasn't a terrible Olympics but it certainly was the worst in recent history.

 

[Matty Greens Left Boot]

The other thing I didn't like is mates of competitors doing expert opinion. Laura Kenny whilst a great Olympian was far too matey with the riders and even refused to criticise even when athletes were making poor decisions see mens and womens omnium and the mens points race. . Saying how well they had done to come away despite finishing poorly. We had many world champions or number ones across many sports that simply didn't turn their world cup gold into Olympics gold

 

[tonyw]

Only Americans do total medal counts. Everyone else does golds silvers then bronze's. On that basis we have had our worst Olympics in 20 years winning fewer golds than 2008 and the lowest in the medal table. These are professional athletes and funded as such I expect to see some sports that under achieved to see cuts in funding and we need to do more to target golds. Australia and the Netherlands finished above us with much smaller populations and much smaller funding. It wasn't a terrible Olympics but it certainly was the worst in recent history.

Think I read somewhere that - due to overall budget cuts - they are expecting the funding for the next Olympic cycle to be frozen at best (meaning a cut in real terms). So some tough decisions to be made.

You look at the awards for the Paris cycle:

Current funding awards

Details of the winter and summer funding awards for the Beijing and Paris, Olympic and Paralympic cycles.

www.uksport.gov.uk

and there's some glaring underachievements.

£6.5m for judo - zero medals, and that's after only one bronze in Tokyo
£5.5m for modern pentathlon - zero medals
£3.5m for badminton - zero medals, only three athletes (Men's doubles, Women's singles) even qualified for the Games, and none of them made it to the knockouts
£13.5m for hockey - two QF defeats
Frankly the £23m for one gold and a bronze in sailing doesn't look like great value right now, but admittedly it's the first Olympics in a long while when the sailors haven't been great
(£12m for one bronze is pretty poor from the boxing as well - although they were on the wrong end of some horrific judging......)

 

[Matty Greens Left Boot]

Absolutely agree. And I might even add cycling in there we had BMX champions and track cycling champions who simply didn't perform. We need to be ruthless like Australia and I can see some sports getting significant cuts.

 

[LowerSouth]

Only in the UK.
We build them up .
We knock them down.
Let’s have the post-mortem after they’ve settled back home and not as they are stepping off Eurostar

 

[unification]

In case you missed it, the BBC’s final montage that’s bound to get you blinking.

 

[tonyw]

Only in the UK.
We build them up .
We knock them down.
Let’s have the post-mortem after they’ve settled back home and not as they are stepping off Eurostar

If you think it's only in the UK, then you clearly haven't been reading what Michael Phelps has been saying about the US men's swimmers, or what Carl Lewis has been saying about their sprint relay team!

Also, it's the Olympics. We'll have all forgotten all about it by Tuesday, and moved on to other things. If we don't have the post-mortem now, we never will!

 

[LowerSouth]

If you think it's only in the UK, then you clearly haven't been reading what Michael Phelps has been saying about the US men's swimmers, or what Carl Lewis has been saying about their sprint relay team!

Also, it's the Olympics. We'll have all forgotten all about it by Tuesday, and moved on to other things. If we don't have the post-mortem now, we never will!

Negative headlines on the front pages is not a post-mortem .
That will be done in the coming weeks and months by the various sporting bodies .

 

[Essexyellows]

The difference between Gold and Silver can be a thousandth of a second, the blink of an eye.

Lets celebrate the fact that 65 athletes gave up years of normal life, got through qualification, heats etc then, against the rest of the world, got an Olympic Medal.

Well done Team GB.

 

[SteMerritt]

The target for Team GB before the games was '50-70 medals', which they achieved, so I don't think there will be much in the way of a 'post-mortem'. Secondary aim was 'top-5 in the medal table', which they missed.

It was certainly frustrating seeing so many silvers in the last few days but the golds escaping us - two on the track alone where we were on for a gold with less than 10 meters of the race remaining.

 

[Marked Ox]

Think I read somewhere that - due to overall budget cuts - they are expecting the funding for the next Olympic cycle to be frozen at best (meaning a cut in real terms). So some tough decisions to be made.

You look at the awards for the Paris cycle:

Current funding awards

Details of the winter and summer funding awards for the Beijing and Paris, Olympic and Paralympic cycles.

www.uksport.gov.uk

and there's some glaring underachievements.

£6.5m for judo - zero medals, and that's after only one bronze in Tokyo
£5.5m for modern pentathlon - zero medals
£3.5m for badminton - zero medals, only three athletes (Men's doubles, Women's singles) even qualified for the Games, and none of them made it to the knockouts
£13.5m for hockey - two QF defeats
Frankly the £23m for one gold and a bronze in sailing doesn't look like great value right now, but admittedly it's the first Olympics in a long while when the sailors haven't been great
(£12m for one bronze is pretty poor from the boxing as well - although they were on the wrong end of some horrific judging......)

Isn't boxing getting cut for the Olympics anyway? Think I've heard that but could be wrong.

 

[Big Ron]

Isn't boxing getting cut for the Olympics anyway? Think I've heard that but could be wrong.

I think there will be a review as the IOC stripped the IBA of its status to govern the sport - usual reasons including governance, corruption, finance and the fact it was run by a Russian who viewed it as his personal fiefdom (not uncommon in sports if you look at UEFA for instance).

I see the LA Olympics have reinstated baseball/softball (no surprise there) and added 20/20 cricket, lacrosse (guaranteed US gold given the college system), squash (not before time) and flag football (ie tag American football), which seems almost as farcical as breaking (which has now gone!).

 

[Marked Ox]

I think there will be a review as the IOC stripped the IBA of its status to govern the sport - usual reasons including governance, corruption, finance and the fact it was run by a Russian who viewed it as his personal fiefdom (not uncommon in sports if you look at UEFA for instance).

I see the LA Olympics have reinstated baseball/softball (no surprise there) and added 20/20 cricket, lacrosse (guaranteed US gold given the college system), squash (not before time) and flag football (ie tag American football), which seems almost as farcical as breaking (which has now gone!).

I just can't see boxing surviving based on this Olympics and where the amateur game is currently. Maybe it'll come back down the line but it is a shambles currently including with the judging.

 

[Kernow Yellow]

I think there will be a review as the IOC stripped the IBA of its status to govern the sport - usual reasons including governance, corruption, finance and the fact it was run by a Russian who viewed it as his personal fiefdom (not uncommon in sports if you look at UEFA for instance).

I see the LA Olympics have reinstated baseball/softball (no surprise there) and added 20/20 cricket, lacrosse (guaranteed US gold given the college system), squash (not before time) and flag football (ie tag American football), which seems almost as farcical as breaking (which has now gone!).

They should also be cutting football, golf and tennis (among others) - basically any sport where there are already much more prestigious international tournaments. The focus on Andy Murray, a man who has won $64million in his career, given how much we'd already had of that at Wimbledon, was embarrassing when there were so many other personal stories of sportspeople who get no other opportunity for such a spotlight. I'm a big fan of cricket but there's no need for it to be an Olympic sport.

Tom Pidcock winning that mountain biking gold was one of the best pieces of sport I have watched for a long time. That's the kind of niche drama the Olympics is great for.

 

[Whingit]

They should at least mix golf up a bit. Normal rounds the first and fourth days with a par 3 course on the second and something else fun on the third day like crazy golf, Andrew Cotter commentating on professionals playing crazy golf would be excellent tv.

 

[Marked Ox]

They should at least mix golf up a bit. Normal rounds the first and fourth days with a par 3 course on the second and something else fun on the third day like crazy golf, Andrew Cotter commentating on professionals playing crazy golf would be excellent tv.

Combo of Crazy Golf, Pitch and Putt and Football Golf. Then football is represented so the u23 competition can get binned off.

 

[ZeroTheHero]

I enjoyed the Olympics generally, although I only dipped in and out. I enjoyed the 'niche' events like the climbing and the BMX biking especially. Like some others I think they ought to bin off some 'major' sports: golf, football and tennis - there are better competitions for all of those: ones that the competitors and the public take more seriously. It has got a bit dull in some sports though - the Chinese winning all of the diving medals and the USA domination the track stuff was a bit dull. The 'breaking' was a bit silly and I watched a bit of the sailing - totally incomprehensible most of the time. I am not a fan of the USA adding to the next Olympics with extra sports that they know they have a huge advantage in to begin with!

I thought the opening ceremony was awful: bitty and unatmospheric. I didn't bother with the closing ceremony, but coincidentally turned it on in time to see Tom Cruise doing his 'Mission Impossible' bit, which was both quite amusing and typically American!

It filled up two weeks before the season started.

 

[werthersoriginal]

So final reckoning.....total number of medals (65, 3rd overall) - great; number of different sports to medal in (18) - great; number of golds (14, 7th overall) - really disappointing. In the end, not only did Japan & Australia finish miles ahead, and France squeak by us at the last.....even the Dutch finished ahead of us in the final reckoning (amazing Olympics for them with a population of less than 20m!).

Slightly concerned from what I'm reading already that Team GB is going to be hailed as conquering heroes, whereas we should be having a bit of an inquest as to why more of those podium places weren't turned into gold. This is not like pre-2008, when we would all clap the plucky British amateurs giving it their all......they are now mostly professionals, paid by the British taxpayer (strictly speaking by the 'People who can't do maths' tax, but opportunity cost and all that......).

Some bronze medals were amazing - Georgia Bell coming back from retirement, and taking 14 seconds off her post-Covid personal best in the 1500m whilst still working a full-time job was stunning; all the diving medals were great too because the Chinese diving factory of 150 dives a day throughout your childhood is probably not something we want to be trying to emulate.

But the Women's 4x100m team? Clearly the fastest team, but bungled two exchanges to let the US pip them - we shouldn't really be praising their silver, but asking why it wasn't gold. Ditto Joe Clarke in the Kayak Cross.....World Champion, won every heat without a sweat, but lost the final to a guy he'd already wiped the floor with in the semis and looked far too happy with his silver medal for my liking. Even Emma Finucane - being hailed as a conquering hero for bringing home three medals from a single games. But she was the sprint World Champion last year, when the podium was the reverse of today. "I feel on top of the world. This whole week has been a rollercoaster for me, so many high and so many lows. That bronze medal felt like a gold medal to me," Well no, it's a bronze medal. It means you finished third and you're not on top of the world actually. Give me Laura Trott's two golds rather than a gold and two bronzes every time.

But maybe I've just been in America too long.....

It's only a bit of fun mate. Can't really have an official inquest over why a woman ran a fraction of a second slower than another.

 

[tonyw]

The target for Team GB before the games was '50-70 medals', which they achieved, so I don't think there will be much in the way of a 'post-mortem'. Secondary aim was 'top-5 in the medal table', which they missed.

It was certainly frustrating seeing so many silvers in the last few days but the golds escaping us - two on the track alone where we were on for a gold with less than 10 meters of the race remaining.

I mean there certainly will be a "post-mortem" insofar as there is about £250m to be given out to support British Olympic athletes over the next four years, and UK Sport needs to decide which sports get what. That's not suggesting the games overall was poor for Team GB. But resources are finite, and we need to commit them to supporting those athletes that have the best chance of delivering in LA.

And as well as talent, dedication and the level of the competition, character should be part of it as well. I'd be more inclined to be funding people who were pissed off with silver or bronze, than those that were delighted with a lower step on the podium. Need that sort of Tom Pidcock or Alex Yee attitude to get us back to competing for 2nd or 3rd in the medal table again........

 

[ZeroTheHero]

I think people who break their seasons best or personal best and get a medal (of whatever colour) actually have shown a huge amount of character and are perfectly entitled to be delighted with their performance. And those who have dedicated significant amounts of their lives to training in generally poorly renumerated sports have every right to go and compete against the best in their field. If we only enter competitors who are likely to win a gold, then it will be a very small team in LA.

 

[SteMerritt]

I think people who break their seasons best or personal best and get a medal (of whatever colour) actually have shown a huge amount of character and are perfectly entitled to be delighted with their performance. And those who have dedicated significant amounts of their lives to training in generally poorly renumerated sports have every right to go and compete against the best in their field. If we only enter competitors who are likely to win a gold, then it will be a very small team in LA.

You also have up-and-coming athletes who are gaining experience. Who can remember Usain Bolt's Olympic debut in 2004? Nobody? Didn't think so. But the experience put his career on the trajectory it ended up taking.

 

[tonyw]

I think people who break their seasons best or personal best and get a medal (of whatever colour) actually have shown a huge amount of character and are perfectly entitled to be delighted with their performance. And those who have dedicated significant amounts of their lives to training in generally poorly renumerated sports have every right to go and compete against the best in their field. If we only enter competitors who are likely to win a gold, then it will be a very small team in LA.

Hey, if you're the best in Britain at your particular (Olympic) sport, and you can hit the qualification standards, then absolutely you go to the Olympics - and every British person should be cheering you on when you're there.

I'm just saying that Britain has a limited amount of funding to support a limited number of athletes, and in real terms it's apparently going to be coming down in the next cycle, and that money should be going to support the best gold medal hopes (to concede SteM's point....could be now or in the future).

I also don't disagree that there's a lot of British athletes who should be delighted with their performance even if they get silver, bronze or even finished well down the field - if they were producing the very best they were capable of. I mentioned it earlier, but the diving is the classic example. No British diver is realistically going to beat the Chinese unless they have a mare, because they're spending eight hours a day in the pool doing 150 dives a day from a ridiculously young age - which is something we shouldn't be trying to emulate. So the 10m dude who got the bronze deserves every bit of praise.

My ire is mostly reserved for the British world champions who didn't hit their best, underperformed and won lesser medals - and seemed perfectly cheerful and happy with themselves (and there were quite a lot of those in Paris). That's the sort of attitude that needs to be drummed out if we're to do the very best we can.

 

[LowerSouth]

So Sports Britain is currently using funding to coach and train over 1000 athletes.
Just over 300 went to the Paris Olympics.
Some of those will go to LA in 2028
Some of those will also go to Brisbane 2032.
It’s a long term strategy, with some tweaks along the way .