When the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist came out last month, a teaser began doing the rounds. Which of the six names was the odd one out? The answer: Katarina Johnson-Thompson. Because while she became world champion, no one else on the list – Mary Earps, Stuart Broad, Frankie Dettori, Rory McIlroy and Alfie Hewett – actually won the biggest event on their calendars.
Harsh? Undoubtedly. Especially given that England’s women reached the final of the World Cup, Broad retired after a thrilling Ashes, and the others enjoyed spectacular moments too. Yet it did reflect a broader truth: last year was a fine year for British sport, but not a vintage one.
But as 2024 dawns there is a tingling sense that this really could be one for the ages, one to compare with the glorious summer of 1934, when Hedley Verity took 14 wickets in a day against Australia, Henry Cotton ended a decade of American dominance of the Open and Fred Perry won Wimbledon. Or even 1966, 2003, or 2012, which have become four-digit shorthand for British sporting triumphs.
For that to happen, England’s men’s football team will surely have to win their first major title for 58 years at this year’s Euros. But you don’t need a St George’s flag tattooed on your chest to believe they have a favourite’s chance. The bookies do too.
After all, in Harry Kane England have the leading scorer in Europe’s top five leagues. In Jude Bellingham they have the top goalscorer in Spain. And luck has also been on their side: if they top their group they won’t play another group winner until the semi-finals.
Naturally familiar questions remain. Will Gareth Southgate’s handbrake be on or off? Will he trust the attacking talent at his disposal, or his more conservative gut? Either way England’s odds of 7-2, equating to a 22% chance of glory, don’t seem wildly out of kilter.
Then, just 12 days later, comes the main sporting dish of the summer: the Paris Olympics. Here too the omens look promising, with analysts at Gracenote predicting that Team GB will win 65 medals – one more than at London 2012 – across more than 20 sports.
There may even be further British sporting success in 2024. Whatever you make of Tyson Fury, he is favourite to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999. Meanwhile Manchester City and Arsenal are among the favourites to become the first English club to lift a European Cup at Wembley since Liverpool in 1978.
But even if expectations ultimately fall short of reality, two points are worth stressing. The first is that British elite sport has been on some run over the past 15 years –albeit with too many scandals for comfort, across gymnastics, cycling, swimming and elsewhere. The second? That this success on the pitch is not necessarily trickling down.
Historically, though, we have rarely had it this good. The plunging lows of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when Britain won a solitary gold, is only a generation away. Euro 2008, where not a single home nation qualified, closer still. Yet these were not huge outliers. As far back as 1912, the Observer was questioning the state of British sport after the “debacle” of the Stockholm Games.
In a piece headlined “British Olympic Failures: Are we decadent at sport?”, a downbeat Sydney Brooks urged his readers to “look at the record”. “The South Africans and New Zealanders taught us a few years ago that we had simply forgotten to play rugby,” he wrote. “At lawn tennis our former supremacy is waning … and in swimming, skating and racquets I know of no Englishman who is indisputably first.”
Brooks also lamented Britain’s dwindling success on the polo field and the billiards table before warning: “Both as individuals and collective teams, whenever we are pitted against foreign competitors the odds are that we will get the worst of it.”
Meanwhile, before the last Olympics in Paris in 1924, the Guardian’s “special correspondent” also warned that Britain was being eclipsed by the US and the rest of Europe. “In the early days their antics merely amused us,” the correspondent wrote. “The idea that the day would come when the continental nations would outclass us never even entered our heads.”
Then came a suggestion, wholly radical for 1924: Britain should employ more foreign coaches “to impart the necessary technique” or “to send our professionals abroad to learn their business”. It took the best part of a century for such an idea to take hold, as well as huge amounts of public money, but look at the results.
Yet away from elite sport, the picture remains far less rosy. Leisure centres are still closing down. Swimming pools are still being shut. Activity levels across the population are either flatlining or falling. And while so many of us love watching sport, multiple studies have shown little correlation between elite success and ordinary people doing more exercise.
With that in mind, some of the smarter minds in the sports sector have a fresh wish for 2024: that politicians commit to making Britain the most active nation in Europe. It’s a noble ambition. But while some MPs, notably Tracey Crouch and Kim Leadbeater have stressed the benefits of a healthier population, particularly for the NHS, it is one that could take money and decades to achieve.
No wonder, then, that many of us prefer to focus solely on elite sport: ready to bask in the glories and sweet hosannas that may lie ahead.
