Welcome to ‘Little Britain’ in Paris – inside Team GB’s Olympics performance lodge

“This is absolutely the jewel in the crown”, declares Mark England, Team GB’s chef de mission, surveying the Lycée René Auffray high school in Clichy on the outskirts of Paris which, for the next three weeks, has been transformed into a bespoke ‘performance lodge’.

Put simply, it is a one-stop hub for athletes, families and friends to relax, unwind, socialise but critically also prepare for the biggest moment of their sporting life away from the hustle and bustle of the Olympic Village. In its scope and ambition, Team GB chiefs believe that it is unprecedented among any nation at the Games.

Fuelling performance

The local school which has been transformed into a performance base is also a specialist catering college, meaning that Team GB have vast kitchens and canteen space at their disposal. This has proved absolutely crucial in the days leading up to the start of competition following complaints about both a shortage of key foods in the Olympic Village restaurant and concerns about some of the quality control. There have been no such issues just a short 15-minute coach journey away, where teams of chefs spend the day preparing delicious, nutrition-packed food inside extensive kitchens.

“It is a great place to get away from the hubbub of the village, to get away from the distraction and have a bit of calm time – you are only as good as your last meal,” said Wendy Martinson, the Team GB performance nutritionist.

A seven-day rolling menu has been designed to optimise sporting nutrition while snack stations, with freshly prepared sandwiches, cereals, fruits and yoghurt, are on hand at all times. Aldi, one of Team GB’s biggest commercial partners, provides much of the food, having dispatched 53,000 different items. Breakfast tea is among the most in demand items although the 700 jars of peanut butter – with its high nutritional value – is sufficient for two per athlete. There are also 6,500 bags of popcorn, more than 1,000 bottles of squash, 200 boxes of cornflakes, 22,000 cereal bars, more than 1,000 boxes of muesli and almost 1,000 bags of dried mango on hand for Team GB athletes.

The lodge also has a team of chefs brought from the UK to work with local chefs and, such have been the demand following complaints about the Olympic Village, an extra chef has travelled in from England. The food has proved so popular in comparison to the village that athletes are coming for lunch and then taking supplies away for later in the day. The rowers were among those regularly visiting in recent days and, with the vast physical demands that come with their sport, they often eat in excess of 5,000 calories each day.

Through the main school playground, you then enter more obvious performance areas, including a giant gym that has been installed inside an air conditioned marquee on an astroturf pitch. There are also several large sports halls in which Olympic standard conditions have been replicated for indoor sports.

For the table-tennis players, this even meant getting special permission from the local council to black out the windows in order to optimise lighting. Extensive performance analysis tools have also been transported from the UK.

Family first

These will be the first Olympic Games to contain a creche in the athletes’ village and particular attention has also been paid at the performance lodge to provide an environment that is universally family friendly. There will be a record number of Team GB mums competing at these Olympics.

Inside the ‘family and friends’ room just off the entrance to the performance lodge is a mixture of sofas, beanbags and deckchairs, with board games, colouring books, magazines and a nearby breastfeeding room.

Big-screen televisions will stream all the action amid a constant supply of refreshments. “We think there is a performance gain to have a hub for friends and family because it means that athletes are not traipsing around Paris trying to find them,” says Greg Retter, the head of performance services. High standards of cleanliness are non-negotiable and, alongside the sanitiser stations dotted around the walls and even hanging off the belts of staff, there are detailed hand-washing instructions.

Anyone experiencing any symptoms of illness are asked not to attend and, with in-house testing at both either the performance lodge and Olympic Village, Team GB can differentiate between viral and bacterial infections within minutes. “We also test for gastrointestinal testing... if we pick up an early case of norovirus, then we will be much more aggressive in terms of our isolating strategies,” says Retter.

Rest and recovery

A few steps along the corridor, turn left and then into an increasingly darkened space before you arrive into what is usually the student common room, but now displays some very clear messages on the wall: “Snoozing for success – Sleeping well, winning big – Harness the power of sleep.” And there are duly eight ‘sleep pods’ in which athletes can take a nap.

Four of the pods are fully enclosed, soundproofed and look rather like giant MRI scanners. The other four contain just a shield over the user’s head and play relaxing music on a cycle which is designed to last just 20 minutes. That is considered optimal for an afternoon nap and, with the performance benefits of sleep now so well established, a majority of elite athletes do try to incorporate some daytime rest into their routine.

“I’ll certainly be back,” said the badminton player Ben Lake on Tuesday, after trying one of the pods for the first time. Team GB are acutely aware that the Olympic Village itself can be a noisy environment.

For those who want to relax in other ways, there is table football, pool, table tennis and a resident coffee station – redesigned in the Union Jack colours – and manned by the local barista Danilo, who is fast establishing himself as the lodge’s most popular member of staff.

A first this year inside the performance lodge is also what is called the ‘pause pod’, an area with two small tents, diffusers and mindfulness books in which staff can step outside the bubble. There are also two psychologists and a medical doctor on hand who is an expert in mental health. “Those psychologists are there to support the athletes but also the mental health of the staff – to make sure everyone gets the support they need,” says Retter.

‌One team

As part of their welcome into the team, every new athlete is given a talk at which Great Britain’s Olympic history is briefly conveyed. They are also given two gifts. The first is a bracelet with the logo of the British Olympic Association, the outline of a lion and the words ‘Team GB, Paris, 2024’. The second is a book, which details Team GB’s legacy, but also contains 21-page space to record their thoughts. “I do encourage them to drop a few sentences down, just so they can reflect on that in years to come,” says England.

On Tuesday, the performance lodge was hosting athletes from badminton, tennis, rowing and hockey but preparing also for the arrival of table-tennis players and boxers. Andy Murray was due on site any day and England is convinced that the team environment, which builds over the course of each Olympics both within and between sports, is an intangible explanation behind their recent success.

“A lot of athletes will not necessarily train here – they’ll come to spend time outside of training in a very high-quality, relaxed environment, just to further embrace that one team value,” he says. “Over the next 10 days, you’ll see the interaction gets stronger. Overtly and subliminally it builds to a very strong crescendo which aids performance. I’m not familiar with other national committees doing something to this extent.”