Team GB’s successes can give us insight into the country’s economy

There are lessons to be learned from how and why GB Olympians have gone from under-performer to globally competitive in 25 years

Last modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 06.09 EDT

Forget the feelgood factor. The warm glow generated by Team GB winning gold for three-day eventing or the modern pentathlon will quickly fade. Anybody who thinks sporting success will prompt a mini-economic boom is deluded.

That, though, doesn’t mean the Tokyo Olympics have no bearing on the economy and its performance. There are important lessons to be learned from how and why Great Britain’s athletes have gone from serial under-performers to globally competitive in the past 25 years.

More than half a century ago the athlete-turned-journalist Chris Brasher wrote an account of the 1968 Mexico games, an event that mixed the political – the Black power podium protests by US athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos – with some memorable performances. It was also the Olympics where Dick Fosbury revolutionised the high jump with his flop technique.

Brasher’s book provides clues as to how the economy would change in the next half a century and insights into what would be needed to achieve success.

Turn to the list of medal winners at the back of the book and two things stand out. Firstly, China is nowhere to be seen in the medal table because it didn’t take part. Secondly, the participation of women was far more limited. There would have been no medals for an earlier Laura Kenny because there was no women’s cycling; in athletics it was thought women couldn’t cope with any distance above 800 metres. Rowing, sailing, boxing, hockey and football were men-only events. The past 53 years have seen China emerge as an economic superpower and more women join the paid labour force. Both trends were evident in Tokyo.

Teams now approach the games in a far more professional manner. Brasher tells the story of a 19-year-old runner, John Davies, who could not make it to the start of his 800 metres heat because no member of the British medical team was expert enough to treat his leg injury and by the time he got help from another team it was too late. Such amateurism would be unthinkable today, with elite athletes having the best backup staff to look after their physical and mental needs. The way in which some companies treat – or rather mistreat – their staff today suggests sport has plenty to teach business when it comes to managing human capital.

Mexico City was a controversial choice to host the games because most of the events took place 7,000 feet above sea level, where the thin air was perfect for the sprinters but brutal on middle and long-distance runners unless they lived at high altitude or trained there for long periods.

It didn’t take long before other countries were seeking to emulate the success of the Kenyans and the Ethiopians, and those that could afford it paid for their elite athletes to train at high-altitude training camps. Closing the gap meant learning from the successful, a lesson that applies to companies as well as athletes.

Dhaval Joshi, an analyst with BCA Research, last week cited the example of the fosbury flop as an example of how productivity advances are often simply the result of finding better ways of doing things. Until the arrival of deep foam mats, high jumpers used the straddle technique and would have risked doing themselves serious injury by going over the bar backwards but technological developments changed that. The new mats meant Fosbury – in Brasher’s words – was willing to “have a go”. Others followed.

Investment has clearly made a big difference to Team GB’s Olympic success. The medal tally in Mexico was five gold, five silver and three bronze, which by the standards of some of the games that followed was a reasonable performance. Only when John Major decided to put some serious cash into the National Sport Academy did the gold rush begin.

Major’s decision was (and is) not without its critics. There are those who say that because the investment came from the national lottery it was effectively a tax on poor people for the benefit of those more fortunate. Others say it doesn’t matter whether Britain wins five or 50 gold medals, and that the money could be spent better elsewhere.

Yet, judged on its own terms, investing in sport has worked. It has led to improved facilities and better coaching, and allowed athletes to focus single-mindedly on success. The UK economy continues to be an investment laggard among the major developed nations and it shows. The UK has invested massively in sport and that shows too.

The standout performer for Britain in Mexico was David Hemery, who smashed the world record for the 400 metres hurdles, but who had spent much of his life in the US. In that respect, he exemplifies one of the UK’s fundamental economic issues: there are world-class performers but not enough of them.

Andy Haldane, in the days when he was chief economist at the Bank of England, said this was a “long tail” problem: the UK had firms who were at the productivity frontier but far too many that were failing to meet the best global standards.

Team GB does not suffer from the traditional British disease. The cyclists are forever looking for improvements to their bikes or kit that might give them the smallest of edges. The best coaches are hired, often from overseas. Money is plentiful for those sports in which Britain thinks it can be competitive.

In that sense, the approach has been similar to that followed by the fast-growing countries of east Asia, which decided to concentrate on becoming global players in a limited number of industrial sectors. There has been a plan and there has been long-term investment. It has paid off.

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