Chris Boardman has compared expectations of success at the 2012 Games to his first Olympic experience in Seoul, concluding Britain is a wholly different nation and one which expects success.
Speaking before his final Olympic Games as part of British Cycling’s marginal gains team – a position he has occupied for nine years – Boardman remembered his first Olympic experience in 1988 and the attitude of a Great Britain Team that went for the experience.
“It was a long few years before – as a team - we started to think winning was doable” Boardman recalled, “when I first went I never believed it was possible to win.”
Led by cycling, Team GB today occupies an era in which several gold medals in a single discipline is the expectation, whereas twenty years previous five golds across all competition was the norm.
In Barcelona Britain won just 20 medals in total – the lowest count since 1976 – and Boardman’s gold was one of only five for the team and cycling’s only medal of any colour.
In Beijing Britain won 47 medals in total, 20 golds, of which eight were won in cycling; it was a count only beaten in 1908 – the first time the Games were hosted in London.
However, far from believing another home Games will be the magical factor in breaking a century-old record. Boardman cites the only positive as a shorter flight – with a greater pressure and demands around 2012 far outweighing reduced travel time.
Next week Boardman talks about the emotional risk every athlete will have to take if they want to win a medal at the world’s biggest sporting event.
