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Quote 'After all, we were a rugby union superpower in 2003, and I'm sure there was talk of cricket supremacy in 2005'

Since when where GB competing in rugby and cricket?

ScotinSwede ,
you forgot to mention one thing. Before murrays loss to Verdasco in melbourne, Britain was the superpower in tennis too...

Hi Matt

Enjoyed the read, thank you.

I have a quick question - could you give a brief rundown of the major nations who didn't attend the AYOF? (I'm too lazy/internet-incompetent to find out myself).

I was thinking particularly of the fencing results, as this discipline tends to have its power base in a select number of European countries.

Not intending to do down the British effort, mind, I agree the medal haul is wonderful.

ok, thanks. Any morale-boosting results are worth having, and winning gold in any competition always gives you the extra experience of actually winning something - invaluable.

If we had to nit-pick a bit, and based purely on world cup results, England is pretty close to a superpower in rugby.

In terms of finals and wins, England has reached 3 finals and won one, just behind Australia (3 finals, 2 wins) and South Africa (2 finals, 2 wins), but ahead of New Zealand (2 finals, 1 win) and France (2 finals, zero wins).

England also has won the most grand slams in the 6 nations and English clubs have won the most European Cups, despite being clubs rather than regional franchises.

But I'll grant you that if you factor in autumn tests and summer tours, not to mention recebnt form, England just about scrambles into the second division of rugby - distinctly underpower rather than superpower.

I typical British fashion, you turn what could be a 'celebration' of British sport into a cringe worthy article questioning "are we good enough?"

This is an Australian event, organised by Australia with invitations being sent out to competitors across the globe. Rather than trying to stoke the fires of nationalism by having a dig at the aussies; you should really be thanking them for putting on an event such as this.

It might be worth pointing out that the Olympic Youth Games, don't actually have medal tallies. These things are deliberately avoided so that youth sport and competition can be enjoyed without the associated nationalistic jingoism that usually accompanies such events....usually from journalists.

Bit of an own goal here but perhaps if you put your petty jealousies of Australia aside, and got over the sporting chip on your shoulder, then perhaps you could enjoy and write about the AYOG in the spirit in which the competition is held.

The medal count you

Matt - any chance you can give us a breakdown of the shooting related element? It (as you say above) is ever more interesting in light of the falling levels of investment by UK Sport - it's not too hard to remember the heady days of 2000-2002, when Faulds won a Gold in Sydney and the Commonwealths were held at Bisley. Now it seems it's the long forgotten sport of the BOA.

Its hardly suprising that the improvements that have been made to our olympic team coincide with extra funding. I predict that improvements will continue as we are now finally investing in younger athletes. Programmes such as the talented athlete support scheme (TASS) provide an excellent base for new talent.

Another reason for the improvement in performance is the funding provided to the support staff. Behind every athlete is an effective team! All athletes now have access to some of the best coaches nutritionists, psychologists, physiologists etc through the EIS. We copied the Australian system and I wouldnt be suprised to see them no copy us!

However to say we are a superpower is a bit over the top. The only superpowers are China and USA and im sure that will continue for a long time but i think we can definatley be the best of the rest!

To the very first post Scotinswede.....

That i believe is what the article is about, people getting carried away and look what happens: We have been poor in rugby since winning the world cup, we have been poor in cricket since winning the ashes.

Hence the article stating lets not get carried away with the success of 2008 olympics.

but at the same time, it's good to be optimistic for the future of our sports.

"Irishman Ed Joyce has turned out for them [England cricket team] too in recent years"

Firstly, Ed had to qualify in the same way that Pietersen, Lamb, Hick etc. had to qualify.

Secondly, the Republic Of Ireland, where Ed is from, is not in the UK.

Hi Matt,
Just a correction on your quote in regards to the U21 euro championships -

"But the main poin is that it was a rare good showing by a British team at that level "

What about the Scottish U19's going one better and actually making a the final in 2007???

I like the aggressive nature of the author towards those commenting! People get away with talking too much rubbish...

Please don't have a go at me for some reason for saying that...

Re #11

adrianforest, I think Scotinswede's point was that GB weren't Ashes winners or Rugby World Cup winners.....England were. Whereas GB are the ones that compete in the Olympics.

On another note, does anybody else hate the hideously americanised term "Team GB"?

Good blog by the way Matt...

The (football) showing in '07 was pretty good...but we did get a bit lucky in playing a Serbian team that had already qualified. On the flip side we knocked Germany out in the playoff...and almost beat the Dutch in their own stadium.

Qualfied for '09 as well...

I realise this will not be a popular point of view on here but why the hell should we be subsidising sports people at all.

Someone leaves school and wants a trade or a vocation, they become an apprentice or go to university. Live on low/no wages and get little or no help financially, except from their parents.

Someone leaves school and wants to become a top sportsman and we are all supposed to put our hands in our pockets and subsidise them.

Yes they did well in China and good luck to them, but in all honesty, while being pleased for them it matters not a bit to me.

The gold winners will make a fortune out of sponsorship and advertising and are highly unlikely to be paying anything back into the pot of their particular sport.

What about the non medal winners. If they went and achieved a personal best that would be acceptable, but mostly they're just gutted at failing miserably. The relay team couldn't even get round without dropping the baton.

The Olympic movement lost it's way years ago and the ever increasing number of non sports included makes it a total nonsense. Synchronised swimming and diving, what rubbish. Beach volley ball the list is laughable. They'll be having darts, snooker and ten pin next.

Boblinc

"The gold winners will make a fortune out of sponsorship and advertising and are highly unlikely to be paying anything back into the pot of their particular sport"

Well, no, because success breeds success - Chris Hoy has inspired and will continue to inspire thousands of youngsters who would never otherwise have taken up cycling. Eventually, of those thousands, the cream will rise to the top. That's the way success works in all sports. And so that's Hoy's contribution.

But to be able to make it, he needed funding. The alternative is not to bother and accept being useless at certain sports. But I've a feeling that wouldn't be a problem for you - and fair enough I guess.

They get funding now but these athletes clearly have to start from somewhere and would have trained to their events from a young age without the help of Taxpayers money.

Its just a case of how well they use those funds once becoming professional and earning dosh.

I don't mind sportspeople getting money and rewards ONCE they actually win something..its those who get advertising contracts etc despite not doing anything of note that annoy me.

Jordan, what do you want to know about the Shooting at AYOF? There are summary articles on the British Shooting website which have the highlights, as does the BOA's AYOF microsite.

I thought it was an option for people from Northern Ireland to compete for either the Republic of Ireland or GB in the Olympics.

So NI boxers competing for the Republic probably suggests that the boxers are from the Catholic community in the region, while the NI Olympic finalists for GB (Houvenaghel in cycling, Campbell and Chambers in rowing) aren't.

boblinc - you must have a very low cost definition of "fortune" if you think Olympians are automatically wealthy. And I have seen a number of ex-Olympians giving back to their sports.

Matt, I completely agree. You bloggers seemingly cannot win. If you write a balanced article arguing both sides you are accused of sitting on the fence by the commenters, and if you put forward a point of view, you are accused of bias. I admire your liking for fighting your ground.

As for those pursuers of the extremely tired "dont say we when you england", "for your information Ireland is not the UK", "Andy Murray is British until he loses", please all grow up. Most are slips of the tongue, not politically charged statements.

As far as a British team vs a Eng/Scot/NI/Wales Olympic team - technically of course the latter is not possible as none of them is a country, they're all nations within the UK so have no right to field an Olympic team. Anyway, I hope the British team is kept, as it a wonderful way to bring the nations together, if only momentarily.

British sport is, I think, on the up, and we should all celebrate that.

Good blog!

I believe the reason it's called "Team GB" (and thus the three letter code is GBR) is because when the Olympics kicked off in 1896, Ireland was part of "GB". Thus the country registered with the IOC as Great Britain, as it was correct at the time.

When Ireland separated from Eng/Wal/Sco, the 'NI' choice came about.

BOA decided to keep "Team GB" as it has the historical significance, especially as the UK is one of the few countries to have competed at each and every Olympic Games.

Someone else may want to confirm/deny the above.

Interesting Blog Matt.

Apart from track cycling and Yachting, I think we are maybe a wee bit away from a Superpower. GB is obviously the class of the two sports mentioned but beyond that??

It's true that the Lotteries Funding has helped enormously but it's also brought other private money in in other ways.

Yeah we had a great Olympics but we can only HOPE that the next games are as successful, we can't guarantee it, and to be honest unless Great Britain can sustain the success over successive games I don't think Olympic Superpower is a term we can coin just yet

Olympians not giving abck to their sport, what the ++++.? Have a look and see what support some of them are giving at grass roots.

Hats off to people like Alistair Brownlee, 12th in the triathlon but still happy to compete in local fell races. New years Eve fell race in Haworth was happy to compete in freezing temperatures. He came 2nd, lost his course record and at the finish it was -5!! Still hasn't won a bunny run though......

If Britain is an Olympic Superpower, Australia will be lobbying the UN for a disarmament treaty; demanding bubblegum be added to Hoy, Wiggins and Pendleton's bicycle chains.

Not to mention downsizing Britain's naval capabilities by giving Ainslie a lilo...

I wouldn't normally bother with this as nobody cares, but it's so hilarious it's unbelievable.

The whole article is desperately trying to create some sense of success and optimism, and its existence and entirety is based SOLELY on two pieces of 'evidence':

First an 'Australian Youth Olympic Festival', an event nonexistent on the calendar of noteworthy competitions, run by Australia for the benefit of Australian athletes, with the majority of talent around the world absent and rightly so. 20 countries competing, half of them minnows. Now that's a competition to draw conclusions and make predictions for the future, ain't it Mr. Slater? Just like the Commonwealths, GB tend to accumulate dozens of medals there too you know.

Second, an "unofficial winter pecking order". A statistics table fabricated by the BOA, manipulated to fit their targets in identical fashion to government figures showing crime going down every year. GB won ONE medal in EACH of three single-event world championships so, rejoice, British winter sports are booming! Seriously now, everybody knows that GB and winter sports together in the same sentence is a joke, an old one mind you, so obviously Mr. Slater you're having a laugh.

As for the '07 football U-21's, in addition to facing an team that didn't care and made 11 changes as somebody mentioned above, everyone remembers that England qualified to the semis in their typical CHEATING fashion, with an opponent lying injured in the opposition box and them not only ignoring fair play rules but playing onside off him to score!!! No wonder they were abused in that match by players and fans alike. Oh and by the way this year they were so poor in the qualifier k/o's that they deserved to be eliminated by the world SUPERPOWER -(c) Matt Slater- of Wales, need I say more. Of course now, again in typical British fashion, they declare themselves as one of the pre-tournament favourites lol

The above article should be passed on to the international press as it epitomizes in highly comical fashion the self-importance and desperation of British sport.

I think you missed the point about Nikos post. He was referring more to desperately optimistic tone in which you write about youth sport, which in itself is not bad, its more the way it comes across like a teenager seeking approval.

The fact that the blog title is the question "are we a super power?" smacks of this desperate need for approval that seems to permeate sports writing in Britain.

Matt, this isn't a personal attack on your but an attack on the jingoistic tone in English newspapers, especially when writing about the performance of their sporting teams. I hope you can see the difference.

We showed, in one Olympiad, what we could do with proper funding.

That was: be world leaders in a few niche sports (cycling, rowing); do well in a few other sports (swimming, track and field, canoeing) and fairly averagely in most of the others.

We're now likely to be even more polarised in 2012 due to budget cuts.

We've broken our legacy promises based on the funding decisions now being taken.

Deliberately in my book.

This country doesn't want all round success.

It threatens the power of the 'elites'.

Construction is more important than participation. The media centre's extravagance more important than funding three minority sports properly in the UK.

Those are choices.

But they aren't choices I agree with.

I'd take a heavy punt on gaining sponsorship in late 2010 or 2011 to offset funding the minority sports deficit of £50m.

It is, after all, probably less than the cost of funding the sick note culture of less than half of England.

Given the Govt's requirement to 'get tough on the layabouts', wouldn't funding some hard working young sportsfolks set an example?

Regarding the recent funding announcement. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport website states the % cut for some of the sports with 'basic level funding e.g Handball 51.6% cut. In reality it is greater than this as the sports that did not go to beijing (Handball, Volleyball etc.) did not funding for the full Olympic Cycle leading up to Beijing. They only had funding for 2 1/2 years. so Handalls 2.99million leading up to Beijing was for 2 1/2 years with the 1.448 being for the full olympic cycle to London 2012.
This actually makes the severity of the recent decisions even worse with the potential impact being greater.
Whilst UK Sports task on this issue has not been an easy one there are some strange decisions across the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines.

I hope our Olympic athetes can continue to improve and win medals but remember they cannot just rely on Taxpayer money at this time of crisis for everyone generally so sadly some less popular sports will miss out although hopefully there will be long term legency (spelling) for our kids of the future.

Trouble is the government seems to be having a lot of bother just paying for the London 2012 facilities!

Interesting article Matt, but I have some worries.
While the elite end and the funding that goes with it proves that we can compete with the very best, generally the state of most sports is pretty parlous once you get past the top few.
Diving, which I've been involved in for over 30 years has the new 'wunderkinder' in Tom Daley, and he is doing great things for the sport. But. If you wanted to do it, where would you go? Tom lives in Plymouth, 5 minutes from one of only 6 full spec diving facilities in the UK. In London there are only 10 pools with diving boards, and not all are open for public use. Clubs are stripped of access time and can't grow so the interest generated by Beijing (and it was a lot) couldn't be met. Hundreds were interested but he clubs can't take them. Public access is not even on the governing bidies radar , so kids cant us e them for fun, and you can't have a new pool with diving boards unless 'you have an establishing coaching infrastructure'.

Development for the future??? We are dead lucky that Tom Daley came along, in the same was that we have had top flight divers in the past like Brian Phelps, Liz Ferris (both Olympic Medalists) or Chris Snode. Where I now live there is one pool with boards within an hour travelling time, our nearest 10meter is a minimum of 1 1/2 hours away.

We might be lucky in 2012, god knows the athletes are working hard enough BUT the legacy we should have is being wasted by a lack of knowledge and application and too much froth and spin.

Just as a point to boblinc about non sports
Diving was one of the original Olympic sports and has been there since 1904, divers have to have the most complete fitness and flexibility level of any sport (one of the reasons Jane smith went from diving to winning Gladiators!)

If you think it's a non sport, may I suggest you just try it?