The Atlanta Olympics were the low point for British sport.
Britain returned from the 1996 Summer Olympics with just one gold medal – 15 in total.
“There was an immediate overhaul,” said Ben Bloom, a sports journalist who has covered the Olympics for more than a decade.
A year later, UK Sport was established, a government agency responsible for investing in Olympic and Paralympic sport. The money, raised through the government and the National Lottery, is transformative for the country’s Olympic programme.
Katherine Grainger, chair of the UK Sports Council and Britain’s most decorated female rower, said: “The good intentions for people buying lottery tickets are sport, culture, heritage and charity.”
“It supports individual athletes, but it invests a lot of money into the governing bodies of Olympic and Paralympic sports in each country,” she added.
“The British team went from being in the mid-30s in the medal table to being in the top five every time,” Broome said. “It changes everything.”
Team GB’s transformation makes one thing clear: money matters in sport.
However, unlike more profitable sports like football, few Olympians see a return on investment of the time and money they spend over the years.
According to Capology.com, an athlete lucky enough to win the UK Sports Player Performance Award will receive an annual bonus of £28,000 ($36,000), while the average annual salary for a Premier League player is nearly £3.1 million.
“UK Sport is faced with a very difficult dilemma, they want to financially support large numbers of people across a variety of sports. But they can’t do that because there isn’t enough funding,” Bloom said.
So how do you inspire the next generation of Olympic athletes without huge amounts of money?
In the first episode of CNBC Sports’ Business of Elite Athlete, we meet some of the young people vying for Olympic medals by the end of the century, including BMX rider Emily Hutt and speed skater Willem Murray and Freddie Polak.
Click on the video above to watch athletes, their coaches and parents pay the price for their dreams.
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