Rio 2016 Olympics: Great expectations for Team GB

RIO 2016 OLYMPICS

Preview - Sport-by-sport - Results/table

 

THE WORLD turned its eyes towards Rio de Janeiro today as Great Britain aims to follow up the success of London 2012 with its best ever overseas performance at an Olympics.

UK Sport, the nation's high performance funding agency, has set British athletes the ambitious target of winning 48 medals, one more than what was achieved at Beijing in 2008. 

But, having won 29 golds and 65 medals overall four years ago on home soil, this year's objective actually seems reasonable enough. 

The Guardian newspaper agrees and has predicted a total of 58 medals. Meanwhile, its broadsheet counterpart, the Telegraph, reports sports data firm Gracenote Sports has made a forecast of 56.

On that basis, the upper level of the range of attainment set by UK Sport - a total of 79 medals - would clearly appear to be rather pushing it.

In fact, to achieve that level, Britain would have to buck a historic trend whereby no country which hosted an Olympics has gone onto beat their total of medals at the very next Games.

Certainly, though, Team GB - as it is officially branded - has far too much talent to suffer the same fate as the last squad which travelled to the western hemisphere for a Summer Olympics. 

Then, back in 1996, Britain won only 15 medals overall to finish the Games at Atlanta in a humiliating position of 36th in the table.

Indeed, only Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent in the men's coxless pair prevented Great Britain from returning from a Summer Olympics for the first time without a single gold medal. 

A definitive nadir had been reached. 

Thankfully, though, the British Olympic Association had a plan involving funding from the National Lottery and the set-up of UK Sport to identify the best opportunities for success. 

There was an injection of funding into sailing, cycling and rowing, in particular, while the two sports with most medals on offer - athletics and swimming - were also strategically targeted.

Immediately, there was an improved showing. At Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004, Team GB climbed up to 10th in the table with 11 and nine golds respectively.

Then came the huge success in Beijing where Britain was ranked fourth - behind only China, United States and Russia - having delivered 19 golds.

And most recently, four years ago, came those magical two weeks in London where, as hosts, Team GB achieved a top-three position for the first time since 1920 by slipping ahead of the Russians.

Of course, the strategy of UK Sport can be considered controversial in some respects.

Sports such as basketball, synchronised swimming, water polo and weightlifting had their funding withdrawn after they were seen to have underachieved at London 2012.

Critics have pointed out that such judgements can be a matter of perception and that the withdrawal of funding denies the sport any chance of improvement as it has an inevitable knock-on effect at a grassroots level.

In fairness to UK Sport, though, its funds are not limitless - and, even then, its targets are not solely just about winning.

Some of the targets refer to final placings outside of the medal positions so that it can recognise if elite performance in a sport has progressed or not.

And, overall, a majority of sports fans would probably consider that the governing body has been getting it right.

After all, since it was set up, cyclist Sir Chris Hoy has - with six golds - become the nation's most successful Olympian, overtaking the aforementioned Redgrave.

Moreover, with seven medals, Hoy also shares the lead for most medals altogether with Sir Bradley Wiggins. Hoy has now retired, of course, so fellow cyclist Wiggins can take an outright lead in Rio.

In track and field, the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford have become household names across Britain after starring in Super Saturday four years ago.

Meanwhile, boxer Nicola Adams and taekwondo champion Jade Jones are both back looking to add to their respective happy London 2012 memories.

Team GB is again expected to perform well in anything involving a boat - such as rowing, sailing and canoeing - while the Brownlee brothers, Alistair and Jonathan, still rule the roost in triathlon.

Swimming is expected to go a lot better than it did four years ago when Britain finished with just three medals, none of which were gold.

Indeed, Adam Peaty has been widely tipped to become the first British male Olympic champion in the pool since Adrian Moorhouse in 1988.

Elsewhere, there are genuine prospects of success in diving through Tom Daley, and in gymnastics through Louis Smith and Max Whitlock.

Team GB flagbearer Andy Murray will defend his Olympic title fresh from winning Wimbledon for a second time.

And, then of course, there is golf which is making its first appearance at a Games since 1904.

It could also be its last. Concerns over the outbreak of the Zika virus have been especially prominent in the golfing world and each of the men's top-four ranked players, including Rory McIlroy, will not be in Rio.

In fairness to the golfers, a group of 150 physicians and scientists sent an open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) in May, calling upon them to have "an open, transparent discussion of the risks of holding the Olympics as planned in Brazil".

But the WHO dismissed the request, stating that "cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus", and that there was "no public health justification" for postponing them.

Even still, getting the show on the road in Rio has not been easy amid an economic and political crisis which has engulfed Brazil.

The Brazilian economy has officially been experiencing an economic recession since early 2014.

And this has been coupled with a political crisis which has resulted in President Dilma Rousseff facing an impeachment trial over allegations she manipulated the government budget.

Unsurprisingly, there have been the customary complaints about the accommodation facilities - most notably from the Australians - while traffic jams have clogged up the city in the build-up.

Of course, the biggest pre-Olympic storm was not something for which Rio could be blamed.

Doping in sport, and at the Olympics especially, is nothing new - but the subject became especially prominent in the run-up to these Games, with the spotlight falling on Russia in particular.

An independent investigation commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency reported that Russia's Ministry of Sport and Federal Security Service had operated a "state-dictated" system to implement an extensive doping program and to cover up positive samples.

In response, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) immediately called an emergency meeting to discuss the report.

But then, in a total cop-out, spineless IOC president Thomas Bach left it up to individual sports federations to decide whether Russian athletes should be able to compete.

Ultimately, 271 Russians were cleared for competition while 118 were removed with Russia claiming now to have the cleanest team at the Games. 

Closer to home, cyclist Lizzie Armitstead found her way into the headlines for all the wrong reasons after it was revealed she had missed three drugs tests.

Armitstead - who won Team GB's very first medal at London 2012 - has denied any wrongdoing on her part but it is difficult not to be cynical.

Hopefully then, Rio 2016 will instead provide only positive stories from now on and cynicism can take a back seat.

After all, even just as a viewer, the best thing about the Olympics is the sheer escapism of it: a two-week period every four years where the drudgery of life is put on hold and all that really matters is which men and women in this world can go highest, go fastest and be strongest.

Unfortunately, for people watching in Britain, many of the biggest events are in the middle of the night.

The men's 100m final, for instance, is scheduled to be run at 2.25am in the early hours of Monday 15 August.

Nevertheless, the BBC is providing round-the-clock coverage for nightowls and a daily highlights show at 9.15am to allow people to catch-up on anything which they have missed.

There will also be a montage or two, and - no doubt at some point - a moment for which a lump in the throat is unavoidable.

Welcome back to the Olympic Games - the greatest show on earth.

There's power in the Union

SCOTLAND will decide on whether to become an independent country following the signing of an historic agreement by Prime Minister David Cameron and Scottish Nationalist leader Alec Salmond.

Mr Salmond will hope the referendum - to be held in autumn 2014 - represents a successful end to a long road, given the original purpose of the party's formation in 1934.

However, it is also the biggest gamble of the SNP leader's political life as, so associated is he with the campaign for Scottish independence, that a failure to win the vote could only ever be taken personally.

The good news for Mr Salmond is that he remains personally popular. Latest polling gives him an approval rating of plus 10, which compares favourably with the three leaders in Westminster, Mr Cameron (minus 24), Labour leader Ed Miliband (minus 14), and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (minus 58).

Meanwhile, the Nationalists continue to hold a lead in overall polling for Scotland, despite their status as a party of government north of the border following their stunning election win 17 months ago.

The bad news for Mr Salmond is that his popularity, and that of his party, does not extend to a desire to see Scotland make a break as a fully independent country.

Latest polling shows that, among definite voters, only 30% would opt for independence against 58% who would preserve the Union, a lead of 28 points.

And, in worse news again for Mr Salmond, there is only one way which that trend is going, with smaller leads - 11% in January and 20% in June - showing in favour of the Union previously.

So, why this apparent contradiction then? Well, perhaps the most likely reason is that the Scottish people are not quite as different to the rest of Britain as they would like to think.

Historically, any political or constitutional changes on this sceptred isle have generally only come to fruition after being eked out over years and years.

Maybe, it is the case that the Scots are just as small-'c' conservative as the rest of us.

Certainly, Scotland could not be accused of being big-'C' Conservative, with still just a solitary Tory MP represented in the House of Commons.

Indeed, getting away from the murkiness of Westminster politics altogether is easily one of Mr Salmond's strongest arguments - and it is not difficult to see why that is the case.

This week, an aide of George Osborne told a ticket inspector that the chancellor "could not possibly" sit in standard class, despite apparently only holding a ticket of that type and refusing to pay for an upgrade.

Then, late yesterday evening - just as the Westminster village was packing up to go back to its second homes for the weekend - the Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell finally resigned.

Mr Mitchell had been under pressure for weeks from Conservative backbenchers and the Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph after allegedly calling a Downing Street policeman a "pleb".

And, although Mr Mitchell denied once again using that word in his resignation letter, he also wrote: "Over the last two days it has become clear to me that I will not be able to fulfil my duties."

Mr Mitchell never actually did confirm exactly what he did say.

He did, in fairness, provide a background hubbub of gossip to another staid party conference season, the only other highlights of which were Mr Clegg's lamentable apology being wonderfully remixed with Auto-tune for charity, and Mr Cameron announcing he had joined Twitter.

No, easily the most fascinating party conference - an oxymoron, perhaps - is the one which is still ongoing in the Fair City of Perth on Tayside, featuring the Scottish Nationalists.

Today, the pro-independence campaign announced it will distribute one million leaflets claiming that every Scottish family will be £1,000 better off under independence.

Meanwhile, in his keynote speech, Mr Salmond has claimed that that an independent Scotland will be a more prosperous and more just society. 

However, big questions remain about some of the fundamentals of life in an independent Scotland if the vote were to be carried. 

Would Scotland remain a part of NATO despite the SNP's stance against using nuclear deterrents? Which currency would Scotland use, if not the pound? Certainly, joining the Euro does not look like a particularly good idea at the moment. 

Thirdly, amid the contradictory arguments put forward, would Scotland really be better off financially on its own? 

It is a lack of a coherent response to these questions which is likely to see the five million voters in Scotland decide this referendum in an emotive way instead. 

Perhaps that explains, from the Nationalists' perspective, why the date of vote is on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish victory by Robert the Bruce over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn. 

Indeed, on a separate note, if Scottish independence could guarantee the national football team qualifying for the World Cup, then it would more than likely pass. 

However, as Craig Levein's team stumbles instead to the bottom of its qualifying group, Scotland has had to look to the talent of its individual sportsmen and women more and more. 

At the top of that list is record six-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy and Andy Murray, who also won Olympic gold as well as his first Grand Slam title this summer. 

Both of them are recognisably Scottish, and yet both of them draped themselves in the Union Flag and broke down in floods of tears as they spoke of their pride in winning gold for Team GB. 

In many ways, this vote for Scottish independence has come at a bad time for the Scottish Nationalists. 

After all, the party never actually expected to win an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament due to the proportional aspect of the electoral system. 

But, given the Scots' desire to see a centre-left alternative to the Westminster coalition, the outright SNP majority can almost be said to have happened by accident. 

Consequently, Mr Salmond's hand was forced by popular demand - and, while he no doubt feels that he can still yet win this vote, it looks as if there is power in the Union yet.

The Weekend in Review

A review of the sporting weekend...

Formula 1
The return of F1 was well worth the wait as Brawn GP made a dream start with a one-two in their opening race.

Jenson Button rammed this correspondent's words down his throat by living up to the tag of favourite by leading from start to finish, but this was far from a boring procession.

While Button got off to a flier, team mate Rubens Barrichello was slow off the start and got involved in the usual first-corner mayhem at Albert Park which took out Heikki Kovalainen and ruined Mark Webber's home race.

Instead it was left to Sebastien Vettel in the Red Bull to carry the fight to Button but the main hindrance to the man from Frome was the appearance of the safety car on lap 19 which wiped out his lead.

Nevertheless, Button built it up again but Vettel looked good value for second place until a late crash with BMW's Robert Kubica which was followed shortly after by them both spinning out, promoting Barrichello back to 2nd.

World champion Lewis Hamilton confounded expectations and was classified as third after Jarno Trulli was handed a 25-second penalty for passing Hamilton under yellow flags.

He had started in 18th on the grid in his under-performing McLaren but had managed to find his way to 12th after the first lap before avoiding the carnage in the rest of the race.

Timo Glock finished fourth in another impressive race for the German and Fernando Alonso got his wish for a top-eight finish by coming in fifth.

Nico Rosberg's sixth-place finish would have surely been higher, had he not been let down by his pit team on lap 15. Debutant Sebastien Buemi and Torro Rosso teammate Sebastien Bourdais finished 7th and 8th in the final point-scoring positions.

It was an engrossing spectacle and the Beeb did a good job in its first coverage of F1 since 1996, a particular highlight being Richard Branson calling himself "a lucky bastard" live on air after seeing his investment pay immediate dividends.

Football
Mixed fortunes for the home countries with wins for England and Northern Ireland but losses for Scotland and Wales.

While Scotland's 3-0 loss in Amsterdam was to be expected - and was indeed a significant improvement on their last showing in the Dutch capital when they lost 6-0 - it leaves their qualification hopes resting on them beating Iceland on Wednesday and picking up enough points in their remaining matches to finish as one of the top eight second-placed teams.

At least Scotland have qualification in their own hands. Wales' meek defeat at home against Finland in front of a pitiful 22,600 has left their World Cup dreams in tatters already, although it was never a likely proposition considering they face Germany and Russia in their group.

But the only way Wales, who face the Germans next, will get easier draws is by improving their qualifying performance and home losses to Finland completely undermine any other efforts.

The Welsh could learn a lot from Northern Ireland who have had excellent home form in recent qualification campaigns and continued this with a fine 3-2 result at Windsor Park against Poland, for whom Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boric had a nightmare.

The result lifted the Irish to the top of their group although this is a somewhat misleading position considering they have played more matches than any of their rivals, including two games against group minnows San Marino.

The Republic of Ireland took the lead within a minute against Bulgaria through Richard Dunne but threatened rarely after the goal and will be happy that the draw keeps them seven points clear of their opponents.

The chase is not over yet, however. Bulgaria have a game in hand and the Irish must play Italy twice and Cyprus away where they have previously had problems before the campaign is over.

England could just about finish off their campaign on Wednesday if they beat Ukraine and they warmed up in convincing style with a fine 4-0 win over Slovakia with the two goals from Wayne Rooney particularly delightful.

The England forwards, however, failed to heed my warning about 'skating around Slovakian challenges' as Emile Heskey, Carlton Cole and Peter Crouch all limped off, although Crouch should be fit.

Cricket
England and West Indies traded victories over the weekend with the Windies the first to strike on Friday after another England batting collapse.

England were bowled out for 117 in the 42nd over, which the Windies had no problems chasing down.

Indeed, captain Chris Gayle looked set to record the fastest ODI century but his stunning attacking display was brought to an end on 80 when he was bowled by James Anderson.

The embarrassing loss for England came in the wake of comments by Kevin Pietersen in the Mail on Sunday, expressing his desire to go home.

And so it is to Andrew Strauss' great credit as England captain that he replied to Gayle's onslaught with one of his own in the next match.

Although it was less extravagant than Gayle's effort, Strauss hit an unbeaten 79 to level the series at 2-2 as England comfortably chased down a readjusted target of 136 from 20 overs.

The series decider on Friday in St Lucia will determine if England have anything at all to take from this hitherto fruitless winter.

Other sports
In ice hockey, the Elite League playoffs mainly went to form with Sheffield Steelers emerging victorious against Edinburgh Caps in a high-scoring tie (12-7 on aggregate: 8-2, 4-5) but one which was won in the first match.

Nottingham Panthers also did most of the damage in their home first leg against Manchester Phoenix, winning 9-5 on aggregate (6-3, 3-2).

And although Newcastle Vipers held Coventry Blaze to a 2-2 tie in the first leg, the Blaze were too difficult to overcome and won 6-4 on aggregate.

Cardiff Devils beat Belfast Giants in the most competitive of the ties, winning 6-5 on aggregate. The Devils beat the Giants 2-1 away before a 4-4 tie after OT in the return.

Thus, the semi finalists are Sheffield, Nottingham, Coventry and Cardiff.


Great Britain finished a disappointing third in the medal table at the World Track Championships behind Australia and France.

They managed just two golds from the efforts of Victoria Pendleton and the women's team pursuit trio of Wendy Houvenaghel, Joanna Rowsell and Lizzie Armitstead.

But the absence of Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Rebecca Romero must also be factored as a genuine reason why Britain did not perform better.


In non-league football, Gateshead stayed top of the Blue Square North on goal difference with a smashing 5-0 win over Hinckley United, the best home win of the season. Lee Novak got two of the goals and an assist.

And Whitley Bay will take a 2-1 lead to Lowestoft after the first leg of their FA Vase semi final.


Finally, Oxford beat Cambridge by a comfortable three-and-a-half lengths on the Thames in the 155th staging of the Boat Race.

The victory was Oxford's fourth win in the last five years, although Cambridge still lead the series 79-75, with one dead-heat.