[danielf]

Originally Posted by Stuart

Just as an aside, I was listening to the comedian, Paul Sinha on Radio 4 (I say comedian, and while he is funny, I've only heard him on Radio 4). He made an interesting point. The media (and particularly the press) always seem to complain about our apparent lack of success in sports, but, over pretty much every single summer olympics we have consistently been in the top 10 of countries for numbers of gold models.

In fact, if you count the total number of golds won in all the Olympic games events, Team GB is fourth.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/...olympic-powers

Not bad for a tiny island with a relatively small population and chronically underfunded sports facilities.

I think that's a little misleading. As far as I know, the all-time medal table is heavily biased towards the period before WW2. Back then fewer nations competed, and the UK was still a world power, which led to GB winning a disproportionate number of medals. This 'evened out' after WW2.