Peering through the golden glow of British athletics only to find dark shadows

Greg Hook

Erm, not sure how old you are but when I said 'for a long time' I meant within the past 10-20 years.

Colin Jackson never won an Olympic Gold and his last Gold at the World Championships was 1999. Linford Christie last won a Gold in 1992 (20 years ago). That to me is a long time.

You can forget the 4x100 relay as those are freak events that we only won due to better teams dropping the batton.

loz

Which better teams dropped the baton that year?

The only baton dropped at the Athens Olympics was by the Netherlands in the heats.
Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics

Otherwise, the UK beat teams like USA fair and square.

Greg Hook

You are starting to bring facts into an argument. That's never a good idea.

My bad, I checked out the other points I made but did the 4x100 from memory.

loz

I think the problem is not so much we aren't producing the sprinters, but that others are getting better whilst we are standing still - notably Jamaca, who didn't even qualify for the final in 2004, but broke the world record in both 2008 and 2012.

But in 2008 Team GB were still the 3rd fastest team after USA and Jamaca in the Olympic qualification rankings. And in 2012 still went into the games as 4th ranked squad behind France (I think). Unfortunately, there was a minor issue with the baton on both occasions....