Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"Absolutely - if the did't have the money to train full time then they would have no chance of winning medals - how many of that field train full time and did the ones that train full time finish ahead of those that don't?
The budget for GB cycling is £32m that is approx £3m a medal - it dwarfs every other country in terms of investment - so should we be surprised when they win more medals than everyone else?
Were you surprised when Wigan dominated RL when they were the only team spending enough money to train full time?
It is no surprise that since the lottery funding has kicked in our success at the Olympics has increased significantly - if you can't see the correlation then you are just arguing to be an booty.'"
Again though, where has anybody expressed surprise? People know about the funding but in British sports spending cash and being successful hasn't always gone hand in hand.
No one will be surprised we did so well in the cycling given our last few Olympics but our medal count isn't just made up from cycling. And for GB and cycling you can point to other countries and the sports they're strong in. China won 7 medals in weightlifting, GB only sent 2 competitors. GB men's doubles won a bronze in badminton against s Chinese team even though they started the games as big outsiders not expected to medal and badminton is one of China's strong sports.
We've won golds in 13 different sports so far (which Nicola Adams and the hockey women potentially bumping that number up), in contrast USA in 9, China in only 8. Poor form to then sh*t over the achievement.