Team GB medal boost forecast

Published on Wednesday 20 May 2009 22:04

BRITISH athletes could be set for bumper medal success when the 2012 Olympics are staged on home soil, scientists "confidently" predicted today.

Team GB, which won 47 medals in Beijing, could gain about 63 at the London 2012 Games.

China, which topped last year's Olympic table with 100 medals, stands to win 78 in 2012, according to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine on the impact of hosting an Olympics on performance.

Increased funding is a key factor, according to the University of Wolverhampton scientists, who looked at the results of 16 Olympic host nations since 1948. They "confidently assert" that Britain, through staging the Games, will have increased medal success before, during and after 2012.

Britain has seen a boom in cycling since hosting the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, home of Britain's dominant cycling squad, they note.

The total number of medals up for grabs at the Olympics has risen consistently from 411 in 1948 to 958 in 2008.

Each country increased its medal haul while hosting an Olympics compared with the years when it did not host the Games, the figures showed.

Averaging out the pattern of wins for all 16 countries showed that the medal total was 28 when not hosting the games. This rose to 40 in the run-up to the Olympics, 60 while hosting, and 47 in the aftermath.

Britain won 47 medals in Beijing, compared with the 28 it brought back from Sydney in 2000 and the 30 it won in Athens in 2004. Using a mathematical formula to predict performance in 2012, Britain should win 63 medals, assuming there are 1,000 available, the study found.