POSTED: October 26th 2011
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NEIL WILSON: British athletes will have the pressure on for London 2012
THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications
LONDON: It is a statistical fact that countries that host Olympic Games win more medals. Spain in 1992 won more golds than at all previous Games combined, and the usual improvement exceeds 25%.
So the latest projections for next year’s medal tables will come as an unwelcome surprise to the British.
After investing £600 million in supporting their competitors over the quadrennial of this Olympiad, they may win fewer golds than they did in Beijing.
Admittedly that total was a 100 year high for them but the projections of Luciano Barra, a former senior Italian Olympic officials, suggest that it may drop from that peak by more than 25%.
Barra’s projections, based on results at world championships, have proved uncannily accurate for past Games. He was the first to hint at Britain’s huge improvement in Beijing to 19. Now, after the latest world championships in October, his analysis gives them only thirteen.
Barra’s analysis, of course, does not take into account home advantage but only current form. But is there an advantage?
Dame Kelly Holmes, double Olympic gold medallist in 800 and 1,500 metres in Athens, questioned when I spoke with her this week whether the advantages of home stimuli might not be cancelled out by the disadvantages of stress induced by excessive expectations.
Dame Kelly has mentored a large number of young British middle distance women runner since her own Olympic triumphs. Hannah England, a silver medallist at 1500 metres at this year’s world championships, is one of her successes.
She plans to bring her On Camp with Kelly group together in December with the prime purpose of guiding them through the minefield of domestic hyperbole next year. She intends even to invite their parents and coaches to lecture them on the curse of expectation.
“For some a home Olympics is going to have real negative impact. For instance, people now expect Hannah to be a medallist at the Olympics just because she was a medallist at the worlds. It doesn’t work like that.
“There will be some people who don’t handle the pressure of being put on a pedestal. It is people who fly a little bit under the radar where they can handle the lesser pressure who may become the new stars." Which was precisely where England was going into this year's world champioonships.
“Remember 2004. All you guys had a gold medal round Paula Radcliffe’s neck and left me alone, which was brilliant for me. I kept quiet even though I knew how I was flying in training. I kept out of the limelight.
“It’s going to be hard to do that next year with the Games in Britain. You have to be a strong character and choose your moments when to accept the limelight and when to stay out of it.”
Don’t read what is written of you, or spoken on radio and television, just keep in your own perfect cocoon, is her advice. “Just treat it like you do any other race, even though it is the biggest of your life,” she said.
Any Briton who can achieve that in the next year – or any Brazilian in 2016 – will deserve a medal.
NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.
Keywords · London 2012 · Neil Wilson · Luciano Barra · Dame Kelly Holmes · Olympics
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