Team GB’s secret weapon in bid for Paris 2024 Olympic success? Covid measures

Team GB say they will still be enforcing Covid-19 measures on athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Great Britain were one of the only teams to go through both pandemic Olympics – the summer Games in Tokyo and the winter Games in Beijing – without returning any positive tests in the host country.

Paris 2024 promises to be very different with the lifting of the intimacy ban as organisers distribute 300,000 condoms to participants in the Olympic Village.

But Team GB’s performance chiefs still want their athletes to be vigilant.

“After Tokyo, we found a really interesting statistic that our incidence of illnesses, particularly gastrointestinal and upper respiratory illnesses, plummeted,” said Greg Rutter, Team GB’s Head of Performance Services. “That was because of the work we did around keeping athletes safe during Covid.

“We want to have a really good health and hygiene message and delivery around the place because you can be the most prepared athlete in the world, but if you pick up a bug beforehand, that can derail your performance. There’s a big push still going on there.”

Team GB administered 20,000 tests in 40 days in Japan with not one single confirmed positive. There will be no Covid-19 testing in Paris but British athletes will still be subject to special measures.

“Yes, there will be hand sanitising stations everywhere, we know that good hand hygiene is really important,” said Rutter. “We’ll be reinforcing that with athletes and staff in close contact with other people.

“The food hall is a really good example of that and making sure that behaviour is under scrutiny. We’ve done a lot of work with behavioural scientists and the government about nudging people towards an understanding of how to stay safe in that environment.”

Only French people have bought more tickets than Brits for the Olympics, fuelling hope of a bumper medal haul similar to London 2012. Rutter is encouraging Team GB athletes to seize ‘home’ advantage.

“It was really strange going into the empty stadiums in Tokyo,” he said. “I think it was really challenging for athletes to go out there and create world-class performances without that support.

“Paris gives us a real advantage. We saw this in London, having your own fans gives you a real edge and we’re putting a number of programmes in place to help athletes’ friends and family engage with the whole Olympic experience, almost to weaponise that as a positive element to drive performance.

“If we can harness that power behind the athletes and drive that, I think it’ll be a massive advantage.”

Official Sleep Partner, Dreams, is supporting Team GB with investment in sleep for athletes in Paris.