Great Britain National Thread

[Mkbw50 438]

I wouldn't be too down based on two days but it's not great. Taekwondo was disappointing today and diving as well. The medal in Judo was a bonus though

[Quasit 865]

3 hours ago, JamDH said:

When is it time to start worrying? Is it now?

That depends on what you were hoping for. Someone expected 70 medals but that was never within reach.

I would have said around 50 total - which is a considerable drop from Rio already - but now I'm at around 30-35. Many "flagship" sports are falling apart like rowing and athletics and I don't expect track cycling to save the medal count either. Gymnastics is also not great. Taekwondo looked very good a while ago but it is clear that many athletes train for this moment at the Olympics. So you can't go by world championship golds from two years ago either.

Don't know about sailing and I don't care about equestrian.

 

Also, for one of the "big guns", GB ignores many sports way too much. Handball, basketball, volleyball, water polo almost non-existent. Even a sport that has 18 medal events (wrestling), totally ignored, same can be said about fencing, badminton and sprint canoeing. Not even many tennis players to be seen. When some sports don't produce the desired results, it's good to have a backup. With cuts in funding because the results are not as good as you were targetting you'll just kill more sports.

 

So yes, right now it does not look good.  

 

Ultimately, not every country can always have good results. There will always be a disappointment somewhere.

[Grassmarket 3,369]

It’s not a case of ignoring teams sports, women’s football & hockey apart. It’s that there is absolutely no way to create a team that even qualifies for the Olympics in a sport that does not have a domestic professional league.  Such a league would have to  do well in European club competitions, sell players to other pro leagues, have a large fan base etc etc.  Only ice hockey has managed this over the last decade.

[Orangehair43 251]

2 hours ago, Quasit said:

That depends on what you were hoping for. Someone expected 70 medals but that was never within reach.

I would have said around 50 total - which is a considerable drop from Rio already - but now I'm at around 30-35. Many "flagship" sports are falling apart like rowing and athletics and I don't expect track cycling to save the medal count either. Gymnastics is also not great. Taekwondo looked very good a while ago but it is clear that many athletes train for this moment at the Olympics. So you can't go by world championship golds from two years ago either.

Don't know about sailing and I don't care about equestrian.

 

Also, for one of the "big guns", GB ignores many sports way too much. Handball, basketball, volleyball, water polo almost non-existent. Even a sport that has 18 medal events (wrestling), totally ignored, same can be said about fencing, badminton and sprint canoeing. Not even many tennis players to be seen. When some sports don't produce the desired results, it's good to have a backup. With cuts in funding because the results are not as good as you were targetting you'll just kill more sports.

 

So yes, right now it does not look good.  

 

Ultimately, not every country can always have good results. There will always be a disappointment somewhere.

Not sure about Badminton - GB is better than most non Asian countries in the sport. 
 

Not sure why GB is so poor at Fencing as it is popular at a recreational level. 
 

Going from 67-33 medals would be pretty shocking for any country and Paris will surely just see a great risk of further decline and extreme pressure to perform Better than Tokyo or probably see lottery funding entirely abolished and replaced with everyone trying to get private funding. 
 

Tennis has been a long term issue for the Uk and another rather puzzling issue. 

[Nickyc707 382]

There is a lot of nonsense being spoken about how GB is doing so far. How many likely medals have we actually missed? Jade Jones has been mentioned but she was up against an opponent who she has had problems against in the past and who won a bronze medal in Rio when competing for Iran. Basically she hasn't able to compete in international competition for three years while her refugee status is being sorted out or she would almost certainly have been seeded here. Jones's defeat was a disappointment but can't be considered a shattering shock given the quality of her opponent.

 

Peter McGrail has also been mentioned. Again he was unlucky to draw another tough opponent. It was his loss in the resumed qualifying tournament that cost him as he would almost certainly have been one of the four seeded boxers otherwise. He was an example of an athlete who was hurt by the delayed Olympics. Others like judo's Chelsie Giles benefited from it.

 

In terms of sports it was obvious that rowing was going to be weaker following retirements after 2016. 33 out of 41 rowing squad members are making their olympic debuts. I still believe 2-3 medals are possible starting with the men's four. The eight haven't suddenly become bad rowers overnight and will I think turn it round. The women's lightweight double sculls and maybe the pair and men's quad may also still challenge for medals.

 

In taekwondo we only had five competitors to begin with and despite Jones's loss we could still match the three medals we won last time with Walkden still to come and both Williams and Cho capable of medalling on their day.

 

In swimming some are suggesting that we are not doing as well as we did at the Europeans which is not surprising given that this is a global event. We have plenty of medal chances to come from Peaty, Scott (×2), Dean, Proud, Renshaw, Dawson and maybe Wood, Guy, Wilby and Greenbank. Add the men's 4x200 free, 4x100 medley and mixed medley and we still have strong reasons to believe that we can surpass the six medals we won in Rio.

 

Overall we are going to do worse than we did in London and Rio but the period after hosting a games is always difficult as top athletes retire or in some cases go on too long. Rowing, gymnastics and cycling are all going to do less well, partly for this reason but also because other countries have seen what we have done and upped their games. Added to which many of the coaches who contributed to that success have now gone on to work for other countries. There will be some compensation from swimming and maybe boxing but all in all I'm expecting a medal haul of around 50 which I think will be surpassed only by the USA, China, Russia and Japan with their vastly greater resources.

 

Instead of hand wringing after just two days of competition  wait until we see how the Games pan out as a whole before casting judgement. There have already been plenty of shocks as some of us were predicting after the disruptions of the past two years and there will be more to come.

 

 

[Orangehair43 251]

Silver for Alex Yee. A great result. 

 

 

I can see GB being higher in the American style total medal table than the gold ranking which could be in single figures.

[Grassmarket 3,369]

Up to 6th on the medal table.  Apart from the usual suspects, medals are being distributed around lots of nations at the moment.

[Mkbw50 438]

And finally, a Gold!

[Nickyc707 382]

2 hours ago, Mkbw50 said:

And finally, a Gold!

Two days earlier than London.

[Mkbw50 438]

OH YES!