Athletes put Great back into Britain
Aug 27 2008 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal
It was two weeks where bad news could be buried as Team GB shocked even themselves with their Beijing medal haul. Stuart Rayner reports on the North East’s Olympians.
THE weather has been miserable, the energy companies are hiking up their prices and the credit crunch continues to bite. Yet for the past couple of weeks people up and down Britain have been coming into work with smiles on their faces.
The reason was an Olympic performance as remarkable as it was unexpected from Team Great Britain. Britons have made a habit of waking up to good news from Beijing, and returning home to find out about even more podium finishes.
There have been failures and no shortage of snipers, carping that we can only win medals at sports you can do sitting down. But what was seen by many as a dry run for London 2012 has set a standard which will be extremely hard to match even on home soil.
When the 313-strong team left for China, UK Sport set a minimum requirement of 35 medals and eighth in the medals table (they were 10th in 2004), as a stepping stone to finishing fourth in 2012. The number of British medals did not massively exceed that target, but the colour of them did. Some 19 of the 47 gongs were gold, putting the team fourth in the final table.
North East athletes played their part in this remarkable success story. Our 16 athletes claimed four medals (all bronze). But for a part of the world largely neglected when handing out facilities and cash for sportsmen, there was no shortage of feel-good stories.
The region’s first Beijing medalist, Jo Jackson, was part of the supporting cast for episode one of the Rebecca Adlington Story. It might never have been written had Jackson held off an incredible finish from the woman who would be Britain’s big success story of the Games. While Jackson’s bronze may not have had the glamour of Adlington’s gold, the background offered an encouraging insight as to what could be achieved in four years’ time. The Richmond-born 400m freestyler refuses to join the exodus of swimmers towards the Midlands, where the national training centre is sited. She prefers to live in Northallerton and swim for Derwentside. And after the opening of a 50m state-of-the-art pool in Sunderland this Easter, hopefully others will be able to stay true to their roots.
The men’s swimmers, including Newcastle’s Chris Cook, failed to hit the heights but the women set the ball rolling for Britain’s Games. Whereas the stunning performance of the cyclists may never be surpassed in this country, the female swimmers did well but left scope for improvement. Having reached individual finals on their Olympic debuts Jemma Lowe and Jessica Sylvester can realistically expect to push for the podium four years from now.
The same can be said of walker Johanna Jackson (who broke the British record) and Katy Livingston, seventh in the modern pentathlon. Not everyone went to China able to put their performance down to experience, however. The tears of 30-year-old Sarah Clark when she lost to Claudia Heill for a second successive Games were an indication that sport can be cruel. Like Clark, Chris Tomlinson is of an age where he may get another shot, but cannot bank on it. The Middlesbrough long-jumper, who will be 31 in 2012, did well just to make it to the Bird’s Nest, having torn his calf in Crystal Palace three weeks before he was due to jump in Beijing. Intensive treatment and gritted teeth got him onto the runway but not the final.
Others, though, brought their experience to bear as Lowe and Sylvester must in future. The dream would have been for Chris Newton – after nothing in Atlanta, bronze in Sydney and silver in Athens – to complete the set. The 34-year-old had to settle for bronze in the men’s points race and the consolation of being part of an outstanding team performance from the cyclists.
Bronze was a considerable achievement for Matt Wells. However, with only the Australians in front of the Hexham rower and double sculls partner Stephen Rowbotham metres out, they would have hoped for better before being pipped by Estonia. Carla Ashford and Jess Eddie had a hard luck story of their own from Qingdao – illness striking two of their team-mates before the women’s eight final and leaving them to settle for fifth.
The North East’s boxers left with high hopes but while Bradley Saunders failed to live up to his billing, Sunderland’s Tony Jeffries produced an outstanding performance to claim bronze.
Alan Wills’ regrets will come not from his disappointing archery showing but his comments afterwards while the hardest hard-luck story of them all was Vicky Barr’s, an unused team member of the women’s 4x400m relay team in which Kelly Sotherton, was chosen instead of the Chester-le-Street star.
This, though, was a tournament where bad news stories could take a back seat as our Olympians put the Great back into Great Britain.
