Never forget Atlanta. Every time a British athlete wins a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rio, remember the Atlanta Games of 1996. I was there, and I saw some great sport — and absolutely none of it was British. Great Britain finished 36th in the medal table, behind Kazakhstan, Algeria, Belgium and Ireland.
There was a single British gold medal, and I missed it. It was won by Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, now both sirs: two enormous boys on the burning deck. For the rest, eight silvers and six bronzes seemed to confirm the nature of our sporting culture: the nation that aimed low and missed.
Simon Barnes on Team GB’s Olympic success:
Why were we so bad at sport? If you worked as a sportswriter back then, you needed a good answer. We just don’t have a winning mentality in this country, people complained. My line was that we just didn’t have a winning system: too much of British sport was still a gentlemanly muddle.
Rio 2016: Adam Peaty celebrates winning gold and setting a new world record in the Men’s 100m Breaststroke (Photo: Getty)
A few years after Atlanta, I attended a training camp for British swimmers in Cyprus.
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