2008 Olympics Updates

Having competed at the last five Paralympic Games it will be a new experience for me to be a spectator in Beijing. However, as a commentator I will still be close to the action and be able to speak to the team each day.

Trying to pick out ones to watch from the incredibly strong British swimming team is difficult.

Just to qualify onto the team you had to be ranked at least sixth in the world and it is a team that topped the medal table at the 2006 IPC World Championships.

There will be some familiar faces in Beijing who seem sure to medal - swimmers such as Sascha Kindred, Nyree Lewis, David Roberts, Jim Anderson and Natalie Jones.

However 45% of the team are first time Paralympians and they are likely to be in the mix too.

The GB swimming team have maintained their success for the same reasons cycling and sailing were so successful at the Olympics - funding, planning, attention to detail and focused athletes and staff.

Since the release of National Lottery funding to cover more than just capital projects, British Swimming has been able to invest in the development of talented athletes.

Simply throwing money at something will only get you so far. Team members like current head coach Lars Humer focus on getting all of the detail right all of the time and this doesn’t happen by chance.

There will already be a four-year plan in place to move the team on far beyond Beijing.

As with most sports, the athletes put in all the hard work required to get into physical shape but here there is a real sense of team in the broader sense.

Each component of the support team from strength and conditioning to sports psychology, from sports science to the office admin support, everyone is focused and passionate about helping the swimmers be the best they can be.

However, the British team will not have it all their own way. Ukraine has a very strong team of predominantly visually-impaired swimmers and, with stars like Erin Popovich and Jessica Long, the USA will accumulate a substantial medal haul.

Few swimmers will be as dominant as South Africa’s Natalie Du Toit in the women’s S9 events and of course there will be a very strong team representing the host nation China.

There are a couple of races that I am particularly looking forward to.

The Men’s 34-point freestyle relay is always very exciting and although GB won gold in both Sydney and Athens they are likely to be pushed very hard by Australia, with Matt Cowdrey leading the charge.

However, my pick for the entire competition would be the Men’s S8 400m freestyle which will be on 12 September.

It will feature Britain’s Sam Hynd, who is the world record holder for the event and, despite it being his first Games, he will be favourite.

He will face one of the most talented swimmers in the world Xiaofu Wang who will have the home crowd behind him. It is sure to be an exciting contest.

Just a small part of me is envious of this year’s Paralympic swimmers. To race in such a beautiful pool like the Water Cube will be an incredible experience for them.

Thankfully, the larger part of me has come to terms with the fact that my time as an athlete has been and gone and now I can just enjoy commentating on their endeavours.

There’s a temptation (a very British temptation) when looking at the Beijing medal table to ask how on earth are we going to do better than that in London.

It’s a fair question. This has, after all, been Great Britain’s most successful Olympics since our croquet-inspired domination of the 1908 Games.

What’s not fair, however, is to just give up after asking the question and wait for the inevitable disappointment to arrive. As Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right.”

So it is to the British Olympic Association’s credit that it has asked the question and come up with an answer.

Its “Ambition 2012” programme is perhaps the most impressive initiative the often-maligned organisation has undertaken since ignoring Margaret Thatcher’s call to boycott the Moscow Games in 1980.

Adding to our haul of 19 golds, 13 silvers and 15 bronzes will not be easy in London, but by giving 152 young hopefuls and their coaches a taste of the Olympics here, the BOA has made it that bit easier.

Speak to any Olympian, past or present, and they will tell you the same thing: the size and scale of the Games blow you away at first and how you deal with that can determine your entire Olympic experience - any way of diminishing that jolt to the system can only help.

The anecdotal evidence is supported by BOA research - 70% of Team GB’s gold medallists have competed at an Olympics before, 55% of our total medallists have already experienced an Olympics.

The BOA has often been criticised in the past for being little more than a glorified travel agent, so it is ironic that Ambition 2012 is the best summer holiday our next crop of Chris Hoys and Rebecca Adlingtons could ever hope for.

The 127 athletes and 25 coaches - representing 33 of the 38 Olympic disciplines - have made the trip east in five waves, each spending a week visiting Team GB’s holding camp in Macau, touring the Olympic Village in Beijing and watching the sports they hope to compete in come 2012.

Craig Hunter, the project’s manager, said the idea was hatched soon after London won the bid in 2005 and is proud to be associated with a scheme that has already attracted “why didn’t we think of that?” glances from other countries, the United States in particular.

“We think it’s a superb opportunity for the athletes and will enhance our medal potential in 2012,” said Hunter.

“One of the greatest experiences we could give them was a trip to the Olympic Village. With 16,500 living in there and a dining area that seats 5,000 it can be fairly daunting for a lot of young athletes.”

Integral to the programme has been the involvement of former Olympians as mentors. One of those is Denise Lewis, who earned a bronze in the heptathlon in Atlanta in 1996 before striking gold in Sydney four years later.

“I became involved because of my own Olympic experience,” said Lewis. “I remember what it was like for my first Olympics - I was completely terrified and quite overwhelmed.

“Luckily I did OK in Atlanta but if I can impart some of my knowledge or offer any advice to these young athletes then I think it’s a job well done.

“You need to almost demystify the Olympics. You need to treat it as just another competition. These guys are good enough - there are some athletes here (on the programme) who were painfully close to making the team.

“If you can allow them to see what it’s like so they are not completely blown away by the experience then hopefully they’ll be the best prepared athletes going into the London Games.”

One of those athletes painfully close to getting a ticket to the main gig was Perri Shakes-Drayton: some might say the 19-year-old was painfully unlucky not to get the nod.

But Shakes-Drayton, the top-ranked 400m hurdler in her age group at the 2006 World Juniors, isn’t the type to dwell on what might have been - she is too busy looking forward to what promises to be a glittering career in a GB vest.

“Getting the chance to come here and experience the atmosphere was amazing,” said Shakes-Drayton, who attended the athletics the night fellow east Londoner Phillips Idowu went so close to triple jump gold.

“I was looking at the track and thinking what it would be like to be down there with all those people in the stands looking at me. I tried to imagine what it would it be like if they were all there to see me.”

She should get the chance to experience that for real in 2012. Born and raised in Poplar, she won’t be short of encouragement in Stratford.

But Shakes-Drayton, who won silver at the European Juniors last year, is an old hand at this big stage stuff compared to others on the trip. She has been mixing with some of her sport’s biggest names for a while and seemed to be taking the entire Beijing experience in her leggy stride.

Where the programme could and should pay real dividends is with the likes of taekwondo player Jordan Gayle. A silver medallist at the Youth Olympics in Sydney last year, the 16-year-old Mancunian has been in superb form on the European circuit this year. But an Olympics is a very different proposition, isn’t it?

“I think the best thing about coming here is that I’ve now seen for myself that the Olympics are just another tournament,” said Gayle, with all the cool a teenage martial artist can muster.

Consider the Olympics demystified, Denise. I don’t think Jordan will be tiring himself out chasing autographs in London either. He was far more impressed with seeing three taekwondo players I had never heard of than his encounter with Asafa Powell in the queue for lunch.

Open water swimmer Daniel Fogg was another to impress me with his infectious enthusiasm for what he does and his belief that he belongs here.

“Despite sitting in the rain for two hours [at Thursday's open water race] I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else,” said Fogg. “It was brilliant to watch the best athletes in the world and it just filled me with a load of emotions that I want to be there next time.”

Like Shakes-Drayton, the 20-year-old Loughborough student was probably unlucky to miss out this time. His time will come, though, as I hope it will for all those who made this Olympic recce.

Of course, four years is a long time and a few who came to Beijing will not get the chance to experience Village life for real in London.

But those who do make it will be better off for the taste they got here, and those who don’t have an amazing story to tell their mates when they’re asked “What did you do for your summer holidays?”

Media Village, Beijing

From the moment Nicole Cooke surged past four rivals on an uphill sprint to win Great Britain’s first gold of the 2008 Games in the women’s road race, I thought we could be on to something. Not “our best Games for 100 years” something, but certainly a fortnight to be pleased with.

Those thoughts were back two days later when Rebecca Adlington pipped American favourite Katie Hoff in the women’s 400m freestyle to earn our first gold medal in the pool since 1988. British team-mate Joanne Jackson came home third in the same race and suddenly our often-maligned swimming squad was on the board.

And so it continued. We never had to wait too long for a success of some sort in that first week and our wildest dreams were delivered in spades over the middle weekend, when we leapt up the medal table to heights we haven’t seen since the Liberal Party were in power.

So what next? Having arrived at our 2012 target of fourth in the medal table four years early, do we dig in or take the next ridge?

But before we leap ahead, let’s reflect a little longer on just how great Britain has been in Beijing.

When UK Sport, the agency that dishes out money to the national governing bodies, announced its targets for 2008 they appeared about right - 35 to 41 medals in total, with 10 to 12 of those gold. These seemed reasonable increases on what we had done in Athens and Sydney, and a huge advance on what we had achieved (or failed to achieve) in Atlanta.

I thought they adequately reflected the improved performances many of our Olympic sports had posted in their own events since 2004, without unnecessarily creating a rod for our own backs. It also set these Games up nicely to be a “staging post” on the road to our “stretch target” of fourth in London. Having come 10th in the table in 2000 and 2004, I was looking for progress up the ladder - eighth sounded reasonable.

So when we sailed past the top end of that gold medal target on Tuesday, with five days of competition still to come, I couldn’t help wondering if UKS had pulled off one of the cleverest cases of managing expectations in British sporting history. If it had, it will have a job to do so again in four years’ time.

The Beijing total of 19 golds, 13 silver and 15 bronzes (47 medals in all) is by some margin our best tally ever apart from 1908, which if it were a country on a medal table would be a rogue state.

We finished third on the medal table in 1920 and fourth in 1924, but from there it went downhill. We were 11th in 1928 and have more or less remained there for 80 years. During this period of mediocrity, we would win on average 4.5 gold medals an Olympics - less than a quarter of the number we have earned in the last fortnight.

Compare our Great Haul of China to the gold medals we won in four Games from 1980 to 1992. We claimed 20 golds during that time, just one more than we’ve managed in the last 17 days, despite two of those Games being weakened by boycotts.

So how have we done this? Well, it’s simple really - money goes a long way to deciding success in Olympic sport and our boys and girls didn’t have much of either before 1996.

Our Atlanta horror show, which saw us win one gold and come 36th in the table, brought a resolve to never stoop that low again. It was clear we needed to spend more on sport and the advent of the National Lottery seemed to provide the answer. The government agreed and lotto lolly was diverted in sport’s direction.

Our Olympians have been reaping the benefit ever since - £265m was spent on Team GB over the last Olympic cycle - and increased funding has already been agreed in the run-up to London.

But is money alone enough? Will having £600m to spend over five years in this cycle enable us to find an extra Adlington or a Chris Hoy clone?

No, you need good people and a clear mission too. And even then it’s a challenge but I’m delighted to see how far we have come already. Adlington would later add to her 400m gold with an emphatic victory in her strongest event, the 800m. She is only 19.

And it wasn’t just in the Water Cube where evidence of something building towards London and beyond could be detected. Hoy’s heroics - the Scottish cyclist was the first Brit to win three gold medals at a Games since swimmer Henry Taylor managed it in (yes, you guessed it) 1908 - stole the headlines but it was the youth elsewhere in the team that impressed most.

British cycling’s domination at the velodrome was breathtaking at times - we were that far in front.

Our rowers and sailors also won their regattas - the first time ever for British rowing at an Olympics and third straight for sailing. And the good news was that both teams think they’ve got room to improve.

To be honest, we’ve won so many medals, it would be pointless for me to list them all. You can find them elsewhere. But I should perhaps flag up our first gymnastics medal for 80 years (won by 19-year-old Louis Smith), our first taekwondo medal (Sarah Stevenson), our first women’s windsurfing medal (Byrony Shaw) and our first women’s 400m gold (Christine Ohuruogu).

Inevitably, there were some sports that failed to deliver. In fact, six of the 17 sports predicted to win at least one medal failed to do so, and two more, including high-profile athletics, did not reach their targets.

For some (badminton and diving), the target was a reach; for others, Beijing must go down as a missed opportunity. Sports like archery and judo will have much to discuss when they return. As will boxing but for entirely different reasons - the sport surpassed its target but appears to be split into factions.

I would also like to see a far greater focus on the team sports: we really didn’t make any kind of a mark in these events at all, although hockey is heading in the right direction.

Athletics could also use a period of reflection. It missed its target but can point to a number of near misses as evidence it is going in the right direction. This is true but the British public will expect much more from the Olympics’ main event in 2012.

So it’s been a great Olympics for Britain - best of the rest, top EU nation and ahead of Australia - but there is room still for improvement. We’ve left a few shots out there.

The task now will be to instil the virtues of our most successful sports across the spectrum. We must also, as host nation, attempt to take our place in every possible event. To squander this opportunity would be a crushing failure and a denial of our legacy goals for increased participation in sport.

Roll on London.

Beijing

Once upon a time Britain’s rivalry with Russia was referred to as the “Great Game“, Asia was the playing field and India was the prize. Now, Asia is still the playing field, India’s nowhere and the prize is a great Games.

With three days left and 63 gold medals still to be decided, Team GB are going head-to-head with Russia for third place in the Beijing medal table.

After Super Saturday, Splendid Sunday and Terrific Tuesday, the impossible seemed possible: Britain’s Olympic team really could finish as high as third in the Olympic standings for the first time in 88 years.

But then the track cycling, rowing and sailing finished, and sightings of a suddenly rampant Russian bear were spotted in venues across town. We’re in front at close of play on Thursday, but there’s only one gold in it, 17-16, with the Russians leading on silvers and bronzes.

Hold on to your laptops, ladies and gentlemen, this one is going to the wire.

First, the good news: the Australians aren’t going to catch us. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport can get that GB vest in the post to Aussie sports minister Kate Ellis now.

And, to paraphrase the great Barry Davies, where are the Germans? Frankly, who cares? At least they turned up, has anybody seen the French?

Having won eight gold medals at the weekend, Team GB chipped in with a cycling gold on Monday, before hitting another four on Tuesday. This took us up to third, a spot on the medal table we haven’t seen since 1920. Our best post-WWII finish has been eighth, and that was in 1956. Need I remind anybody that we were 36th in Atlanta, only 12 years ago?

Now the bad news: the Russians are coming. They won three gold medals on Wednesday and three more today - a burst that has taken them from sixth to fourth. We have won one gold medal in the last 48 hours and our six-gold advantage has almost disappeared entirely.

The pedal-powered, oar-propelled, sail-billowing surge that saw us bounding up the ladder past our traditional Olympic betters has petered out. Russia, on the other hand, has started to hit its straps, picking up golds from the Bird’s Nest to the Water Cube, and in sports from modern pentathlon to Greco-Roman wrestling.

We came into Thursday evening’s session at the athletics having inked in Phillips Idowu’s triple jump gold, while hopes were perilously high for something out of the ordinary from the likes of Martyn Rooney and Goldie Sayers. All three performed admirably, and can go home with thoughts of London 2012 in the heads, but only Idowu has a medal and it’s not gold.

Raised expectations are a bugger, aren’t they? Perhaps we all got a bit giddy up there. Suddenly, all reasonable medal chances were nailed-on golds and the Americans were in our sights.

The last two days, however, have seen a growing realisation that we need to hold what we have, convert every serious medal prospect and hope the Russians come a cropper in the women’s handball. Who would have thought we would ever be looking for a result there? Get in there Gro, is all I can say.

But that’s enough negativity; let’s get back on the good foot with more gold. And for that we must look to the good doctor Tim Brabants in the men’s 1,000m kayak race, Crewe’s 19-year-old BMX bullet Shanaze Reade, our three remaining boxers, our two female modern pentathletes or Taekwondo star Sarah Stevenson. There are silvers and bronzes for others to shoot for but those eight represent are best hopes of adding to our 17 golds.

Because Russia will win at least a couple more golds. They’ve got three decent boxers of their own, the aforementioned handball team, some good canoe/kayak hopes and more to come in track and field.

All that said, whatever the outcome, these have been remarkable Games for the British team. Beijing was supposed to be a “staging post” towards the real “stretch target” of fourth in the medal table in London.

Coming into these Games, I thought seventh in the table would be a great result and eighth more likely, particularly after a few injury knocks to key performers. I now can’t see us finishing worse than fourth, which means that 2012 target will need to be stretched further.

So hats off to two men who saw Britannia’s rise: United States Olympic Committee chief of sport Steve Roush and former head of the Italian Olympic Committee Luciano Barra. Both men tipped us for fourth. Barra, however, also tipped the US to thrash the Chinese in the medal table, he got that wrong.

An expert who called that one more correctly is Sheffield Hallam University professor Simon Shibli. He predicted China would win at least 46 gold medals and top the table. They’ve already met the first half of that tip and will undoubtedly manage the second.

These have been disappointing Olympics for the mighty US team. If it wasn’t for the continued prowess of their swimming programme that second spot really might still be in play.

As I write this, the Americans have actually enjoyed one of their better days.

They continue to progress towards double basketball success, their women’s football team just beat Brazil in extra-time for the gold, their women’s beach volleyball pair defended their title against the hosts and their women’s indoor volleyball team will also meet Brazil in the final. You can probably add to that list a softball gold and the men’s baseball, beach volleyball and indoor volleyball teams are all still in the hunt.

It is in the more periphery events that they have been routed by the Chinese. If anything, the hosts have got better in their traditional strengths of badminton, diving, gymnastics and table tennis, and they have destroyed the Americans at the shooting and weightlifting. In these six sports alone, the Chinese lead the US 34-6 in gold medals.

And any American hopes they would claw that back on the track have been irreparably damaged by a Lightning Bolt.

No, the race for gold in Beijing has been settled already, only the scrap for bronze remains to be decided. Come on GB!

Shunyi Rowing-Canoeing Park, Beijing

On the day of the opening ceremony I asked British Rowing’s performance director David Tanner if he had seen that morning’s China Daily.

Above a preview of the Olympic rowing competition, China’s English-language newspaper claimed, in 48pt bold type, “British rowing losing grip”. This followed a less than spectacular prediction of three medals for Team GB’s rowers from US magazine “Sports Illustrated“.

Tanner’s response was concise, curt and correct: “I think some people are going to be looking a bit stupid in a week’s time.”

I spoke to Tanner again today and, while he was too modest to really gloat, “how do you like them apples?” would be a fair estimation of what he told me.

And who can blame him? He had just seen his team finish on top of the medal table with two golds, two silvers and two bronzes.

This is Britain’s best Olympic rowing haul since, almost inevitably, the 1908 Games (which we hosted and behaved like complete swines at by winning nearly everything). We’ve not had it so easy since.

We topped the table with two golds on our own patch again in 1948 but then won only one silver across the next six Olympics.

Things started to pick up again from 1976 and rowing has been a reliable source of precious metal in subsequent Games (thanks to Sirs Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent), but we’ve never bossed the competition. Until now that is.

As well as the medal count, Tanner can point to 10 boats out of 12 reaching finals - that’s 39 of 43 rowers making at least the top six in their class - as evidence of a first-rate regatta. But the most interesting thing he said to me on Sunday relates to what happens next.

“It’s been a great week but I’ve just been telling my coaches that the next Olympiad started 20 minutes ago,” he said with a smile that did not in any way suggest he was kidding.

“We’ve had some great results but one or two crews would have aspired for more. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

He added he was enormously proud of everybody, and joked he would not be taking a subscription to either China Daily or Sports Illustrated, but it was his “the next Olympiad has started” line that most impressed me.

Redgrave, who knows perhaps better than anybody what is needed to win and keep winning, agreed with Tanner’s assessment.

“It’s been a really good week but not perfect. A couple of those boats will be disappointed not to be going home with golds,” he said.

The five-time Olympic champion was referring to the women’s quad, who were narrowly beaten into second by China, and the men’s double, who were squeezed into third place. He also said the men’s eight would have gone into their final thinking gold not silver.

“But that just shows how fine a line success is,” Redgrave continued.

“We should be delighted with our haul. I thought we’d win five or six medals, so we’re on the right side of that.”

Pinsent concurred with the “let’s celebrate” consensus but pointed out a significant fact.

“There were only two crews who didn’t celebrate their silver medals - the women’s quad and the men’s eight, both British,” said the four-time Olympic gold medallist.

“But hey, we’ve never been the strongest nation before in my time so that’s a great result.”

It certainly felt that way. The highlight of the weekend for Britain’s small but vocal band of supporters was probably the thrilling victory for the men’s four on Saturday. But the men’s lightweight double must have run them close.

Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase came into Sunday’s final unbeaten in 2008 - the only British boat to win all three World Cup races this season - and they leave China with that record intact. This was win number 13 for the season.

The official results will show they hit the front early and stayed there, but the official results have a habit of leaving out the best bits. Having looked in control for 90% of the race, the British duo was given two boat-sized frights by the fast-finishing Greeks and world champion Danes.

They held on for the win - our first in a lightweight category since smaller rowers were given an Olympic chance in 1996 - but the effort required took its toll on Hunter, whose rubbery legs failed to keep him up when he hit dry land, quite literally.

But he was up and about minutes later, looking like the happiest man in the Orient, which is apt for a man from east London.

“I’ve been dying for this day since I started rowing. The national anthem, the flag, it’s a dream come true,” he said.

Of course, it wasn’t all grinning Brits at Shunyi. As Redgrave said we were good, not perfect.

If Hunter was the happiest person this side of the Hellespont, Debbie Flood, Katherine Grainger, Frances Houghton and Annie Vernon were the unhappiest.

World champions for the last three years, the crew seemed nailed on to win our first women’s rowing gold. We’re still waiting.

They also hit the front early but couldn’t stay there. They were perhaps unlucky to come up against the only crew from the fancied Chinese team to deliver on home water but “unlucky” wasn’t a word any of them wanted to hear afterwards.

Flood and Houghton already had silver medals from Athens, the 32-year-old Grainger had one from Sydney too. She had promised her team gold and after the race admitted “it’s going to be hard to come to terms with silver”.

Talking to them while they waited for their bus home felt like intruding on somebody’s grief, and while sport isn’t really that important in the general scheme of things, right then it was important. In fact, it was the only thing that mattered to these people and they were hurting.

I found Frances Houghton, who has been blogging for us, and told her not to worry about writing anything until she was ready. It was the least I could say but it immediately felt like a pathetically trivial thing to bring up.

Houghton, a trooper, seemed to understand what I was trying to do and assured me she would put fingers to keyboard soon.

As for the race, well, it would be fair to say she was gutted.

“We really believed we could do it, that’s why it is so disappointing,” she said.

“People say these chances come around again but nobody knows that for sure. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and never be able to row again. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I am so proud to have rowed with these girls.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased to have a won a silver medal. I’ve been watching all week seeing how happy people have been to have won a medal, any medal, but…”

She didn’t need to finish. Redgrave is right about that fine line.

I hope Houghton and the rest of the team enjoy their breaks. They’ve earned them.

And I wonder if she’ll back to give that once-in-a-lifetime shot another crack in London. To be honest, having heard Tanner’s ambition, I wonder if she’ll be able to stay away.