Since the birth of the Olympic movement in 1896, only three countries have sent athletes to every Summer and Winter Games - and Great Britain is proudly among them.
The proceeding 125 years have brought an incredible array of moments which have become etched in British sporting folklore and those heading to Tokyo this summer are the latest to carry the baton in search of similar feats.
In this series of features, we will be shining a light on the stories behind some of Britain’s most remarkable Olympians, the obstacles they have overcome and the legacy they have helped create.
In the second of our three-part series, we focus on post-war Britain, a second home Olympics, rival runners, legendary rowers and a pair of ice dancers that dazzled a nation. This is the story of 1948-1996.
Read the first in our series, looking at 1896-1936, by clicking here.
THE POST-WAR GAMES
The Britain of 1948 was a very different place to what it had been before World War II, as the cost of a six-year conflict was keenly felt and rationing was still in place. But for the 59 nations and 4,104 athletes that descended on the capital for London’s second Games, it felt like the greatest place on earth.
After a 12-year World War II-enforced hiatus, the Summer Olympics returned and London adapted to host the ‘Austerity Games’ by converting Wembley into an athletics stadium, housing athletes in RAF camps and providing some members of Team GB with whale meat to bulk out their diets. Different times, indeed.
The 1948 Games were also notable for being the first since the death of IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin, while Team GB finished 12th in the medal table with three gold medals, two in rowing and one in sailing.
They did win a fourth gold in art competitions, which was making its final Olympic appearance at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where competitors battled for medals in architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.
The IOC has since removed art medals from counting towards the overall table but Alfred Thomson can always claim to be the final Olympic champion in the oils and water colours category.
Team GB’s first post-war Olympic medal didn’t come in London, but instead in freezing cold St. Moritz – hosts of the 1948 Winter Olympics.
John Crammond - making his Olympic debut as a mere whippersnapper at 41 years old - took bronze in the men’s skeleton, while Jeanette Altwegg matched him with a third-placed finish in ladies’ singles figure skating. Four years later in Oslo, Altwegg turned bronze into gold and became Team GB’s second ever individual Winter Olympic champion.
AWESOME ANITA AND PACKER’S SURPRISE
The 1950s saw the Olympics head to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, as Melbourne hosted the 1956 Games…for most athletes!
Due to Australia’s strict quarantine regulations, the equestrian events had to take place in Stockholm five months before the rest of the Games.
Bertie Hill, Arthur Rook and Francis Weldon were not perturbed, winning three-day event gold, while, five months later, over in Australia Chris Brasher became 3000m steeplechase champion. Brasher would go on to found the London Marathon.
Like Brasher, Anita Lonsbrough left an indelible mark on British sport. At the 1960 Games in Rome, Lonsbrough won 200m breaststroke gold before going on to become the first female winner of Sports Personality of the Year in 1962 and Team GB’s first female flagbearer at the Summer Games.
Lonsbrough had that honour in 1964 and watched on as Team GB won four athletics golds, with Ann Packer delivering the most iconic moment when she smashed the 800m world record, despite having never run the distance at international level before.
David Hemery set a similarly spectacular world record of his own at Mexico City 1968, roaring to a sensational gold medal by such a large distance that excited BBC commentator David Coleman, in a hurry to identify the winners of silver and bronze, exclaimed "Who cares who's third? It doesn't matter."
There was an 11-year-old boy in Sheffield who did care though and he later joined the athletics club run by that bronze medallist, John Sherwood: Lord Sebastian Coe.
A ROYAL APPEARANCE
The 1972 Games in Munich saw archery return after a 52-year absence and slalom canoeing make its Olympic bow, while Mary Peters won a memorable gold in pentathlon.
Lorna Johnstone became the oldest British athlete to ever compete in the Games when she made the equestrian team, aged 69, and Equestrian was again the centre of attention in 1976.
HRH The Princess Royal became the first member of the Royal Family to compete at an Olympics when she rode the Queen’s horse, Goodwill, in the three-day event.
David Wilkie was the star performer in Montreal, his medallion necklace and sensational ‘tache the epitome of 70s cool, as he claimed breaststroke gold, and swimming success continued at Moscow 1980, as Duncan Goodhew won the 100m breaststroke title.
But athletics quickly became the sport of Team GB – spearheaded by a pair of middle-distance rivals.
THE GREATEST RIVALRY
Like Prost and Senna or Borg and McEnroe, the names Coe and Ovett will always go hand in hand thanks to their epic rivalry at the 1980 Games.
With unemployment at a 44-year high and the England football team trudging home early from the European Championships, there was little for the nation to smile about. But Coe and Ovett transfixed us all and provided a rivalry that for many is still the greatest in British sport.
Ovett, unbeaten over 1500m since 1977, was the Sports Personality of the Year in 1978. Coe, an 800m specialist, broke three world records in 1979 and took the award off him. Everyone had an opinion, everyone had a favourite. And what happened more than lived up to the billing.
Firstly, Ovett stunned the world by beating the red-hot favourite Coe to the 800m title but Coe got his own back days later in the 1500m to hand Ovett an equally remarkable loss.
They left Moscow having drawn the series 1-1 but Coe had the final say, beating an injured Ovett four years later in Los Angeles to defend his 1500m title.
The middle-distance runners were not Team GB’s only athletics rivals going at it: Tessa Sanderson and Fatima Whitbread also had the nation on the edge of their seats as they battled for javelin supremacy.
Sanderson prevailed by winning gold at Los Angeles 1984, while Whitbread took bronze, and in doing so became the first black British woman to win an Olympic gold.
Daley Thompson, another of Team GB’s greats, won back-to-back decathlon gold medals in 1980 and 1984, while Linford Christie and Colin Jackson bagged sprint silvers in 1988; Christie in the 100m and Jackson in the 110m hurdles.
Christie turned his silver into gold in Barcelona four years later, while Sally Gunnell also delivered the women’s 400m hurdles title. Britain became an athletics powerhouse.
BOLERO
Of the 274 Olympic gold medals Team GB has won, only 12 have come at the Winter Games. However, that also includes perhaps the most famous gold medal of all.
On the 14th of February 1984, Valentine’s Day of course, more than 24 million people tuned to watch a girl from Clifton and boy from Calverton dance in Sarajevo.
Torvill and Dean’s Bolero routine had everyone spellbound, as they received 12 perfects 6.0s to become the highest-scoring figure skaters of all time for a single programme.
Their routine, all four minutes and 28 seconds, was actually 18 seconds over the limit, so to counteract this they moved to the music while kneeling on the ice for 18 seconds before starting to skate.
After Sarajevo, they turned professional but returned to the Olympics ten years later in 1994 for the first Winter Games to take place in a different year to the Summer Games. The cycle ensures there is an Olympics every two years and is still used to this day.
THE GOAT?
The 1980s may have been dominated by athletics but there was also something – or someone –bubbling on the water.
Many will argue Steve Redgrave is Great Britain’s greatest Olympian, and the rower won two of his five gold medals in the 1980s – at Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988.
He remains the most successful rower in Olympic history and the only man to have won gold medals at five separate Games in an endurance sport.
Redgrave was part of the men’s four at LA 84 and then the coxless pair with Andy Holmes in 1988, securing one of Team GB’s five gold medals at each Games.
Seoul 1988 also saw tennis return after a 64-year absence, table tennis make its debut and women’s sailing added to the program. The men's hockey team also won a memorable gold medal.
In Barcelona, Redgrave had a different partner but the same result as he and Matthew Pinsent won gold number three. But perhaps the most famous British moment came on the track in the men’s 400m when Derek Redmond tore a hamstring and struggled to finish the race.
As he limped around the track, his father – who had no credentials – suddenly appeared and helped him across the line, to a standing ovation in a moment that still brings a tear to the eye all these years later.
There were no bumps in the road for Redgrave though, as he and Pinsent did it again in Atlanta to win Team GB’s one and only Olympic gold of the 1996 Games.
With just one gold medal – and 15 overall – Atlanta 1996 was Team GB’s worst return since Helsinki 1952 and they finished 36th in the medal table.
However, out of the ashes comes new life and those Games led to the introduction of National Lottery funding for elite sports – and Team GB’s greatest ever era, which we will cover in part three.