The Atlanta Olympics were a low point for British sport.
Great Britain returned from the 1996 Summer Games with just one gold medal in hand – and 15 overall.
“There was immediate improvement,” said Ben Bloom, a sports reporter who has covered the Olympics for more than a decade.
UK Sport, the government agency responsible for investing money into Olympic and Paralympic sports, was founded just one year later. The money, taken from the government and the National Lottery, has been transformative for the country’s Olympic programme.
“People buy lottery tickets, and good causes are sport and culture and heritage and charity,” said Katherine Grainger, chair of UK Sport and Britain’s top female rower.
“It supports athletes individually, but puts a lot of money into each national governing body for Olympic and Paralympic sports,” he added.
“Britain has gone from the mid-30s in the medal table … (to) the top five all-time,” Bloom said. “It changed everything.”
The transformation of Team GB has made one thing clear: money matters in sports.
However, unlike in more lucrative sports like football, few Olympians are able to make a return on their investment of time and money over the years.
Athletes lucky enough to receive the British Sports Athlete Performance Award will earn £28,000 ($36,000) a year, while the average annual salary of an English Premier League player is nearly £3.1 million, according to Capology.com.
“British sport has a very difficult dilemma because they would love to financially support a lot of people in different sports. They can’t do it because they don’t have enough money,” Bloom said.
So how do you inspire the next generation of Olympic athletes without a lot of money?
In the first installment of CNBC Sport “The Business of Elite Athletes,” we meet some young people vying for Olympic medals before the end of the decade, including BMX rider Emily Hutt and speed skaters Willem Murray and Freddie Polak.
Watch as athletes, coaches and their parents struggle with the price of their dreams by clicking the video above.
