Team Great Britain’s success at the Rio Olympics is being celebrated by newspapers seeking a sign of national cohesion amid the divisions over Brexit.
Their message: despite economic and political uncertainty following the EU referendum, there is at least one reason to be cheerful. Look how good we are now at sport.
With Britain attaining second place in the medals table, and well before the Games reach their conclusion, editors have rushed to praise our sporting stars. But they interpret those medal-winning triumphs in very different ways and offer diverse reasons for it.
We have managed to “put the ‘Great’ back into GB”, said the Daily Telegraph, because of funding that flowed from the national lottery after its establishment by John Major in 1994.
It has enabled “coaches and sporting associations to pick out talented athletes and train them to be world-beaters.” Accepting Mo Farah’s point about individual “hard work and grafting”, the paper believes money provided “that extra edge to get Team GB into the medals.”
The Telegraph concluded: “Since the vote to leave the EU on June 23 there has been a sense of a country unsure of where it is heading next. We needed a lift, and a reminder that the Great in GB is still deserved. Our splendid team in Rio has shown emphatically that it is.”
The Times also thinks money and the establishment of UK Sport in 1997, which allocates the lottery funds, has been one crucial factor. The other has been the embracing of science, such as computer analysis and aerodynamics technology.
Interestingly, it also noted that “participants in the advantaged sports tend to be more affluent and better educated... Three of Britain’s medal-winning rowers went to Oxford and many attended fee-paying schools.
“That allows them to profit from a wealth of educational and financial resources in their training and development. It is often those sports which are easier to pick up late in the day, meaning that British sport can turn around winners relatively quickly.”
The Guardian, pointing to the transformation from widespread pre-Olympics Games negativity to an increasingly positive appreciation of their benefits, said:
“Sporting success is something to applaud, not sneer at - and yes, Britain is good at this stuff. Much of the competition in these Games has been unconditionally inspiring.”
The Olympics are not perfect, said the paper, arguing that “it might be better to hold them on a permanent site in Greece... than to rotate the Games every four years. But Rio is confirming what London taught.
“The games are worthwhile. They celebrate individual achievement of every kind, not just national prowess. They bring people together far more than they drive them apart. And the peoples of the world respond to them with real enthusiasm.”
The Daily Mail celebrated the “sheer diversity” of the men and women representing Britain with such great success in Rio:
“Ethnic minority boxers from tough inner cities, public school-educated rowers, multi-millionaire golfers, cyclists, runners, swimmers and tennis superstars - who probably would never have met in other circumstances - have become a truly inspiring band of brothers and sisters.
And as if to underline their inclusivity, we have heard interviews and acceptance speeches in accents from towns and cities across the UK - Uttoxeter and Hemel Hempstead, Burnley and Bearsden, Coleraine and Douglas. What matters in this team is not where you’re from or how you talk but what you can do.
When so many are emphasising the divisions in our society, this group of exuberant, hard-working young people tell a very different story... The Mail salutes them.”
The Sun, in recognising that “this has been a turbulent and often divisive year”, contended that “Brits have united in awe of the brilliant performances of our sportsmen and women in Brazil, reminding us all why this is the greatest nation on earth.”
The Daily Mirror thought it refreshing to see how this new generation of young Brits “have shown once again that they are ordinary people who manage to achieve the extraordinary.”
And the Daily Express, in its Monday editorial, agreed: “Barely a day goes by at the Rio Games without another clutch of medals, another moment on the podium. How our fortunes have changed. What a lot we have to be proud about.”
Columnists joined in. The Mail’s Robert Hardman believed the Games “have made us a United Kingdom again” and called for the medal-winners to be honoured.
There must be a bumper crop of Olympic gongs, knighthoods and damehoods, he wrote, concluding: “Given what this lot have done to lift the mood of her fractious kingdom in the past few days, she will be more than happy to oblige.”
The Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner argued that a conservative vision has been the inspiration for Britain’s gold rush: “For those interested in the history of ideas, there could scarcely be a more revealing example of the way individualism, with its focus on outcompeting rivals, repeatedly triumphs over collectivism.”
He wrote: “Britain’s medal haul is a lesson in the determined, often ruthless pursuit of success, and the rewards it brings. Yet again, the ideas of the Right have been proved to have so much more to offer than those from the Left.”
In the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh, saw the allocation of money used in concert with a sensible strategy as the key: “There was never a costless route to their present eminence, which the left can cite as a kind of social democracy in action.”
Similarly, the Telegraph’s Jim White believed that the success stemmed from planning, coordination and method: “Properly financed, properly coached, properly organised, the back-up for the Brits leaves the rest in awe.”
He wrote: “The Russians may attempt to gain advantage through state-sponsored doping; we do it by Lottery-funded professionalism.”
