UK Sport has released its targets for Team GB in Beijing this summer, with a medal tally of 35 and a medal table finish of eight.
With just five weeks till the start of the Games, British athletes are “on target and where we would want to be in terms of medal prospects”, according to John Steele, Chief Executive of UK Sport, the organisation, which distributes Lottery funding to elite sport.
For the British Olympic squad to meet this target, boycotted Games apart, it will require the best medal performance by a British team since 1920.
The total number of medals targeted is 41, however it is acknowledged that this would be a ‘stretch’. Given the very tight margins between success and failure at this level, not every single medal will be won. UK Sport believes 85% of these will be achieved, which equates to 35 medals. It believes these will be won across the following 17 sports:
Archery - 2 medals
Athletics - 5 medals
Badminton - 1 medal
Boxing - 2 medals
Canoeing - 2 medals
Cycling - 6 medals
Diving - 1 medal
Equestrian - 3 medals
Gymnastics Artistic - 1 medal
Judo - 2 medals
Modern Pentathlon - 1 medal
Rowing - 4 medals
Sailing - 4 medals
Shooting - 2 medals
Swimming - 3 medals
Taekwondo - 1 medal
Triathlon - 1 medal
For the Paralympics, the sports’ ‘stretch’ target is 112 medals, which equates to 95 medals at 85%. Britain’s Paralympic team finished 2nd in both Athens and Sydney, and to do the same in China (most likely behind the home nation) will require 35 golds.
Minister for Sport Gerry Sutcliffe said, “We are investing a record amount of public money in our elite athletes and hope to see that transferred into medal success in Beijing this summer and then in London in 2012.
“We have made great progress in some sports with the recent World Championship performances of our cycling and swimming teams encouraging ahead of the Games.”
Louise Hudson, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
