On a breathless day of success capped by double gold for gymnast Max Whitlock, Great Britain’s Olympians found themselves improbably duelling with China for second place in the medal table.
As Team GB officials confirmed they were well on course to smash through their target of 48, which would represent their best ever overseas Games, there was a sudden avalanche of medals across the Olympic Park and beyond in sports as diverse as golf, track cycling, tennis, sailing and windsurfing.
While Britain is unlikely to be ahead of China by the closing ceremony, the feat merely underlined the extent to which a winning habit that has fermented a culture of excellence in a core of Olympic sports including cycling, rowing and sailing has started to spread into other disciplines.
After three medals – a gold for Mo Farah, silver for Jessica Ennis-Hill and bronze for Greg Rutherford – for the protagonists of Super Saturday II, there was a glut of British medals on Sunday.
Top billing went to Whitlock, the down to earth gymnast from Hemel Hempstead who became the first British athlete to win two gold medals on a single day for 44 years in the floor and pommel. In the former, he was joined on the podium by two weeping Brazilians, in the latter by his tearful teammate Louis Smith, who won silver. The pair had last week already picked up bronze medals in the team competition.
Whitlock’s pair of golds were the first Britain had ever won in gymnastics, a sport where domestic success had previously been hard to come by before the injection of funding and know how that has propelled Team GB up the medal table from 36th in Atlanta two decades ago to third in London.
Golfer Justin Rose, who has made the most of his Olympic experience by cheering on his Team GB teammates before his event began, has been a passionate advocate for the place of the sport in the Games in the face of criticism over withdrawals from other top players. So it was fitting that he holed the putt to win the first gold medal for 112 years, punching the air and clutching his Team GB shirt.
“I’ve been so into it. I’ve been so up for it. I’ve been just so determined, I suppose, to represent Team GB as best as I could, and it was just the most magical week, it really was,” said Rose.
In the velodrome the medals continued to rain in for Jason Kenny, the heir to Sir Chris Hoy’s sprinting crown, started to close on in on his former rival’s medal tally as he won his fifth gold in the individual sprint. The man he beat into silver, Callum Skinner, is next off the British Cycling production line.
There was another medal guaranteed for Andy Murray who, fresh from winning Wimbledon for a second time, was battling late into the night with Juan Martin Del Potro in an effort to become the first man retain an Olympic singles title.
In the boxing ring, Joshua Buatsi is guaranteed at least a bronze in the men’s light heavyweight division after beating the Algerian Abdelhafid Benchabla.
With further medals guaranteed on the water, where Nick Dempsey won silver in windsurfing and Giles Scott guaranteed gold in the Finn sailing class, officials are supremely confident of hitting their pre-Games target.
Already, Team GB had delivered more first week medals than four years ago, partly thanks to the re-emergence of the swimming team as a serious force with one gold and five silvers. In London, Team GB finished with 65 medals, 29 of them gold, and finished third in the medal table.
Team GB chef de mission Mark England, who said the team dynamic among the 366-strong squad was the strongest he had known since he began in the role at Salt Lake City in 2002, paid tribute to some of the bigger names for fostering that spirit. Flagbearer Murray had moved out of the Village for 12 hours before missing it so much he returned, said England, while Rose had spent five days there.
“We’ve had these five time Olympians – Bradley Wiggins and Katherine Grainger – who have become the most decorated Olympians male and female, dedicating their whole lives to their particular sport, this new generation which is exciting everyone back at home and the new sports which are coming to fruition, such as diving and trampoline,” he said.
“They’ve done so in a way that those inside the sports would have predicted for sure – but those outside may not have expected. So there is a massive, massive momentum in the team back in the Village. There’s a great confidence in what could happen over the next week.”
But he insisted there would be no loss of focus over the next week of competition. Since Atlanta in 1996, when Britain won a solitary gold medal, hundreds of millions of pounds of Lottery and exchequer money have been invested in elite sport. Over the current four year cycle, funding agency UK Sport will invest £350m in Olympic and Paralympic sport.
“This is not happening by chance. This is success by design. It’s the result of 18 years of consistent, coherent and targeted National Lottery investment,” said UK Sport performance director Simon Timson, who pointed to a large number of fourth placed finishes as further evidence of strength in depth.
“We remain confident we are ahead of the curve in achieving our target of a record best away Games. It would be an absolutely historic achievement and we look forward to another week of competition trying to deliver that.”
