ABSTRACT
At the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Great Britain won just one gold and came a lowly thirty-sixth in the medal table. Fast forward three Olympic Games to Beijing in 2008. Here, ‘Team GB’ (as it had now become) won 41 medals including 19 gold and came fourth in the medal table! What explains this dramatic (re-)emergence of Great Britain as an Olympic nation? Even accounting for the fact that Atlanta was an unusually poor Olympics for Great Britain, the improvement in Athens and Beijing is dramatic. It certainly did not happen by accident or by luck. On the contrary, it was the result of the development and systematic application of a comprehensive high-performance sport policy underpinned by a massive investment of financial resources that was unprecedented in the history of sports policy in the UK. This prompts the question as to why such importance is now being given in the UK to high-performance sport, and what are the implications that ought to concern students and scholars of sports politics and policy. This chapter will outline the historical and political context for the development of high-
performance sport policy in the UK. It will become immediately apparent from this discussion that the policy for developing high-performance sport actually means developing Olympic and Paralympic sports rather than sports in general, and it means prioritising Summer Olympic sports rather than Winter Olympic sports. As a sporting event, the Winter Olympics pales in comparison with the profile and impact of the Summer Olympics. In the UK, the Winter Olympics hardly figures on the sporting cultural landscape. It is not difficult to understand the reason for this. Great Britain is not a significant player in the Winter Olympics, and therefore the Games offers limited scope for social and political capital and for international prestige. Also, given the specialist nature of many of the Winter Olympic events, there are fewer opportunities for using these sports for social policy purposes. The vast bulk of the considerable resources being lavished on high-performance sport are directed towards events in the Summer Olympics.
