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Britain’s max medal prediction downgrading, subsequent success familiar to Canadians
Stop me if you've heard this before: a host country focuses heavily on winning Olympic medals, struggles early, downgrades their prediction and then starts to turn things around. No, we're not talking about Canada in 2010, but rather Britain in 2012. Although they're still maintaining their prediction of 48 medals overall, early medal struggles have convinced the hosts to lower their maximum medal prediction to 60 from 70:
Liz Nicholl, the chief executive of the funding agency that has poured £312m into British sport over the past four years and helped bring about the revolution that has raised sights, said it was "early days".
She said she was "not panicking at all yet" and that the target of realising 48 medals — beating the Beijing total — is still very much in sight. However, the top end of their target range, of 40 to 70 medals, has been reduced to about 60. "Momentum is significant. Medals provide momentum. Gold medals provide that extra boost," said Nicholl.
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Nicholl went on to say that the total golds target might be more difficult, though:
Beating the haul of 19 golds in the previous Games and equalling the fourth place on the medal — will be more of a challenge.
"Those who aren't close to the high performance system think we should be in the mix for every gold. But while we're moving on, so is the rest of the world. We're still confident we'll do better than Beijing," she said. "The top four, we've always said it's a goal rather than a target. We've always said it's an aspiration."
What's funny is that much like Canada's early struggles in 2010, the tables started to turn for Britain soon after these comments. Cyclist Bradley Wiggins and the rowing pair of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning came through Wednesday, picking up the U.K.'s first two golds of these Olympics. Both were somewhat expected, as Glover and Stanning were heavy favourites in their event, and Wiggins is a dominant cyclist; he became Britain's most-decorated Olympian with the victory, as he now has seven Olympic medals, four of them gold. He also became the first Englishman to win the Tour de France this year and is the only cyclist to win both a Grand Tour event and an Olympic gold in track cycling. Still, many British favourites haven't delivered on gold-medal expectations so far; star cyclist Mark Cavendish wasn't able to break away in the road race even with Wiggins and others in support, divers Tom Daley and Pete Waterfield missed the podium following a mistake (and received heavy Twitter criticism afterwards) and Lizzie Armitstead's silver in the women's road race was impressive, but less than some had hoped for.
[Related: Brent Hayden claims bronze for Canada]
Glover, Stanning and Wiggins deserve a lot of credit for coming through despite the pressure of hometown expectations, and they may have started to change Britain's Olympic narrative. The U.K. still only has nine Olympic medals as of Wednesday night (three ahead of Canada) and sits in a tie for 8th place in total medals (but is 11th in gold medals), so they have a long way to go. However, many of the Brits' best events are yet to come, and Canada's 2010 experience certainly shows you can't write a host country off this early. We'll see if Nicholl's quotes about gold medals providing momentum are proven accurate.
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