Track Cycling Bonanza for GB and the 110 metre freestyle.

Despite the rumoured efforts of cycling’s nobs, UCI, to shore up GB’s domination of track events, we won seven of the ten golds available at the velodrome. But, by UCI limiting each country to one competitor per event, our total medals declined to nine from the twelve won in Beijing. But, to avoid being a one trick horse, the mission of Team GB was to win medals in twelve sports and so gold gongs have been spread a bit more evenly as we lie third (Tuesday 7^th at 8pm) with 22 Gold medals. We are not going to threaten the top two and there maybe a late surge form Russia. China are top with the USA second. However, look closely at the medal spread of the USA and you realise they are a one trick dolphin. 16 of their 30 golds are from swimming (half of the events), and 30 of their total medals of 66 are from the pool. There are a ridiculous number of medals in the swimming and we aren’t finished. There are the two open water 10km events to come. Twenty eight swimming events are for individuals and six are relays. Swimming is a very lucrative medal winner for the US and has more medals than running events – take out half of the swimming events and the US would look very ordinary. They need to get some more swimming events as China get a lead: perhaps the 110 and 300m freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly or the 402 metres individual medley. In the same vein, East African nations could lobby for some more long distance races in the Olympics such as the 7500, 12500, 15000, 17500 and 20000 metres and maybe the marathon relay. Asian countries could try and get some of their sports in to bag a few medals such as Kabaddi – a game already in the Asian Games. Unlikely. The Olympics is about money and TV rights and hence sponsorship not inclusiveness.