Like the Leeds pack and halves I am struggling to keep up. Has the very nice posh lady and her dancing oss been on yet?

We need to temper this olympic success with a touch of realism.

Yes its great to see GB doing so well but it should - the budgets provided by the lottery are huge in comparison to the majority of other countries. All our competitors are virtually all FT.

If you look at the sports where we win multiple medals/dominate: Cycling, Rowing, Sailing these are sports where the number of countries competing is significantly lower than say Athletics.

It could be argued that given the monies thrown at some of these sports: Athletics being one, the return is pitiful for the sums invested.

It is a great spectacle - and one big win is the cross pollination of sports scientists and the excellence we are now achieving in this country

Nah.

I agree its superb to watch British athletes in any sport doing great things - I think it needs to be brought into context.

Its like SKY in the cycling big budgets bring big results, its no wonder the teams with the most money in soccer are the teams that generally contest the PL title. As a country we spend huge amounts of lottery cash on elite sport so we shouldn't be surprised when they win loads of medals its the least you would expect for the investment involved.

I think it's great to showcase the sporting talent in this country. Hopefully it will get more people out there doing sports, rather than thinking they like sport because they watch footbal on the tv.

A lot of money has been poured into cycling and rowing but for a small island efforts and money has to be focused on an area that can bring success. The money spent probably is dwarfed by money going into the pockets of the England football team, and i know who I'd rather watch, the real sporting legends

Spot on.
The only stain is the taint of drugs.
It was great to hear Gatlin being roundly booed by the (largely) Brazilian crowd when he was introduced prior to the start of the men's 100 m.
Well done to the Paralympic committee for having the bottle to ban the entire Russian team, something the IOC was too weak-kneed to do.
The GB swimming coach reckons we were robbed of at least 4 medals by drugs cheats.
Until all sports introduce a zero tolerance policy towards the use of drugs & other illegal performance enhancements the suspicion will always be there.

The lottery investment goes into facilities - which are used by everyone in the long run, not just elite athletes - and high quality coaching. It's pretty much what the lottery fund was designed to do, and it's money generated from the public participating in something voluntary rather than coming out of central government.

Very little of it ends up in the pockets of athletes. Those that are full-time are mostly able to be so thanks to sponsorship, endorsements or prize money. IIRC even the Band A track and field athletes - the Jess Ennis-Hills and Mo Farahs of the world - get about £30k a year to cover living and training expenses from UK Sport. The rest of their income is what they generate commercially from their performances.

I'm sure I read recently that their performance award is reduced on a pound for pound basis once their annual income exceeds a certain figure - I think £65k was mentioned. If I've got that right, the likes of Ennis and Farah will have stopped being direct beneficiaries years ago.

Worth noting too that the paralympians receive awards on the same basis as the able-bodied athletes.

The least you would expect. Besides winning gold medals.....err....what more can these athletes do? If that's the ''least you would expect''.

Bizarre.

Good to see Murray put that pr!ck inverdale in his place

We spend huge amounts of money on sport that form part of the olympics - what is bizarre is that we seem surprised when we win loads of medals. Are we surprised that the GF is won by teams spending to the cap? or that the PL is won by teams with the biggest wage budget or that SKY win the TDF on a regular basis?

USA cycling have one FT employee GB have a whole raft of coaches, conditioners, scientists, equipment managers - based on that who would you expect to win the most medals?

doing what you need to do to win medals, seems a very odd criticism or mitigation of winning medals.

However poor US cycling may be at organising themselves is pretty much irrelevant.

Its not like we are going out and buying the best cyclists from throughout the world. We are simply investing in ours and allowing them to reach their potential.

Just back up a second. Some people may, for whatever reason be suprised we win quite a few medals. Maybe they are just happy to watch our sportmen win.

Let's get back to the point, you said winning medals was ''the least you would expect''. What else would you expect? That's what they are there to do - win medals. That's what they are doing. The investment does it's job.

Cure for cancer? Solve world hunger?

I bet you're a right laugh to be with on New Year Eve, 60 seconds to midnight...."ok people just remember all the cr@p things that happened to you this year"

Or on somebodies birthday....."well done you're now one year closer to your death"