Britain’s Golden Secret

Great Britain moved from No 36 in Atlanta Olympics to No 2 in Rio

“The secret of our success is the work put into training schedules, diet,
medical support and expert advice over the four years since London 2012 Olympics. We have started
preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.”, said British Olympic
official after the conclusion of the Rio 2016 Olympic games in which Britain has done spectacularly well. But it is not the whole truth. Lottery funding, too, has played a significant role in Britain’s success in Rio.          
Great Britain moved from 36th position in Atlanta Olympics to No 2 in Rio Olympics. Here are reasons behind Great Britain Success at Rio :

• National Lottery funding is the main reason behind medal rise in Britain. In 1996, Great Britain won 15 medals, including just one gold. Team Great Britain was 36th in the medal tally of that year. The following year, the National Lottery started funding athletes so they could train with full concentration, not worrying about any financial constraints. And the miracle happened. By 2004, the medal tally had gone up to 30, doubling again at London 2012 Olympics to 65. This year, it is 67 medals.
• The athletes were placed right next to their venues — so that they do not spend more than a 10-minute travel to the field of play.
• Andy Murray and Justic Rose moved into the Olympic Village in Rio just to be with team-mates.                
• Britain has already started preparations for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. A team of British experts has visited Tokyo Olympic venue and has held
  discussions with Janapese officials at Rio so that the British contingent finds proper facilities four years down the line.
• Support staff of 900, which travelled to Brazil with the 366 athletes
• Britian is funding around 1,400 athletes for 2020. Talent programmes, including “Sporting Giants”, launched by Sir Steve Redgrave in February 2007, have resulted in discovering athletes
• The performance of each Olympic participant is carefully reviewed every time. As a result of such exercise, players receive a major boost.

A Land of Medals

How can a tiny country Jamaica win so many golds?

Jamaica’s global dominance in running started to emerge over half a century ago. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, in which Bharatiya wrestler Khashaba Jadhav won a bronze, Jamaica was ranked 13th by the International Olympic Committee. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jamaica was first in sprints. The amazed world was watching a miracle called Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals.
Harward Professor Orlandao Peterson explains the secrets of how Jamaicans managed to do it  in more elaborate terms. He says it is not because of genetics, as some experts claim. The claim that genetics are responsible for Jamaica’s glory can’t explain why Jamaicans outperform other Blacks in the American
continent. In this context, he quotes Brazil, which has 36 times as much Black population as of Jamaica.
Born and raised in Jamaica, Peterson has a very different answer: Champs. Officially called the
Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association Boys and Girls Athletics Championship, Champs is an annual competition attended by thousands of fans in Jamaica, which takes pride in the fact that it is the only country where a track and field competition is the most popular sporting event.
But the competition is just one part of an astounding success story. To unravel it, Peterson explains that part of the answer is institutional. The British, who ruled the
country, first introduced organised and informal athletics and interschool competitions in Jamaica and other colonies in the late 19th century.
Jamaica quickly stood out from other Caribbean islands in extending these competitions from elite White schools to those of the non-White classes. Soon, several outstanding athletes emerged as role models,
mentors and promoters of the sport. In the 50s, track and field was most popular in Jamaica. The top runners who had won medals at Helsinki had become national heroes.
The efforts to promote running succeeded because of a large number of healthy children and young people. This success was attributed by some to Jamaica’s mountainous terrain but Peterson says it was due to a public health campaign, spearheaded in the 1920s partly by specialists from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The programme, as Peterson says, began in a small town called May Pen, where he grew up. In the town emphasis was given on hygiene, clean water and control of open defecation and mosquito breeding. Primary school teachers were recruited in the public health campaign. Running was the cheapest sport and was adopted as part of this movement. Usain Bolt received his initial childhood training at a remote rural school.
Historical demographer James Riley has described the outcome as “the Jamaican Paradox.” It is one of the rare instances of a poor country with the life expectancy of an advanced society, a health transition that began in the 1920s and improved at one of the fastest paces on record, from 36 years at birth in 1920 to 70 by 1977. It’s no accident that the oldest individual medal winner in Olympic track history is a Jamaican woman, Merlene Ottey, who was still sprinting in international meets at age 52.
Another factor in this Jamaican unbelievable success story is the nation’s combative individualism. Viewed negatively, it is the country’s chronic violence, according to Peterson. But, as he says, the bright side is its people’s extreme self-reliance. Coupled with an effective health policy, the life-expectancy paradox is how Riley explains it. But in running, performance is entirely up to the athlete. One Olympic medal winner advised young athletes: “One thing we go out there for, and that’s to win………To dominate. To crush them!”
The world tasted Jamaica’s this killer instinct in Beijing, where Bolt, while winning the 100 meters in record time, slowed down, thumped his chest and spread his arms in a taunting, triumphant gesture. “We are a confident people,” he later told the BBC.
Nearly 20 years ago, Jamaicans started establishing for-profit track and field clubs, which have brought American-style sports entrepreneurship to the island. Now nearly all the island’s major track stars are being trained locally, greatly reducing the talent drain and shifting the focus to adult runners, lengthening their careers and, with their greater local visibility and wealth, intensifying the island’s passion for the sport.
A former professional athlete, Wilton Peart, believes in the power of training on grass.