Wednesday, August 15, 2012

How we gamed the Olympics

So many team-GB medals; have we suddenly become so much fitter and genetically performant than countries of comparable size?

No, didn't think so.

First we threw out those sports where we had no genetic or historical advantage. So we left the 100 metres to the Jamaicans and the softball to .. whomever.

Then we focused on equipment-based sports: sit-down stuff like cycling and rowing where we have UK infrastructure, technology and know-how. The policy of 'marginal gains' was applied ruthlessly to optimise performance.

It only needs 50 milliseconds improvement to get Gold.

Don't you think our competitors will have figured this out by Rio?

Note: swimming was a sport where it's difficult to find those differentiating marginal gains - our medal score was disappointing.