Journal Nacional – UK invests in sports and becomes a factory of champions

The British delegation shined at Rio 2016: they finished second in the medal table. It was a remarkable achievement, after 20 years of fiasco at the Atlanta Olympics.

It wasn’t easy for the UK to see another country with an Olympics that they used to call their own. Four years after the London Olympics, the former host city faced a newer, more beautiful, and more amazing current city.

British elbow pain was treated on a medal basis. Of the 366 athletes who took part, 130 took the podium, one in three, making the country a new superpower in the sport.

However, the UK looks gigantic, but Brazil is 35 times larger. The British population is less than a third of our population. But this small island has it all to be a great example to us.

Twenty years ago, in Atlanta, the British took only one gold, a total of 15 medals. They finished 36th, 11 places below Brazil. Now, of the 67 medals, 27 were gold.

Several factors explain the amazing second place: hiring the best foreign coaches as in cycling, attention to detail – even specialists control the athletes’ sleep quality. And there was also a decline in the performance of old competitors, such as Australia and Russia.

The most decisive is luck. A national lottery was created to fund the sport two decades ago. The investment jumped from R$ 20 million in Atlanta to over R$ 1 billion.

An independent organization, with no political indications, manages these funds. UK Sport chief explains that the expenses are for training centers and elite athletes, such as Adam Petty, who earns R$60,000 per month to devote himself each month. The way the results do not appear loses appeal. It happened with volleyball.

Critics argue that each medal cost R$20 million. But encouraging them in exercise and health and in the formation of examples is great. It is worth more than gold.