After the indignity of finishing 36th in the medal table at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, a complete overhaul of sport in Great Britain has helped Team GB become one of the dominant forces at recent Olympics.
GB finished 10th at Sydney in 2000 with 28 medals and took home another 30 from the Athens Games four years later.
But it was at Beijing where Team GB really began to get a thirst for glory as they climbed to fourth on the medals table with 19 golds and 51 medals in total.
A further 65 medals and third place followed in front of their home fans at London 2012 and Great Britain’s athletes bettered even that total with 67 medals, of which 27 were gold, to finish above Olympic superpower China in second place in Rio five years ago,
Expectations are more modest for Tokyo but GB still have a number of gold-medal hopes.
Here are just five Team GB best hopes for Olympic glory over the next few weeks.
Adam Peaty
Swimming sensation Peaty is arguably Britain’s number one hope for gold in Tokyo. The 100m breaststroke world record holder is 1/20 to win the event for the second Games running and it is easy to see why.
A multiple world champion and reigning Olympic champion, no other swimmer in history has got within a second of Peaty’s world record.
Another gold beckons, and probably another world record too.
Dina Asher-Smith
The golden girl of British athletics became 200m world champion in Doha two years ago but it is Olympic gold that the sprinter craves.
The 25-year-old from Bromley finished fifth in the 200m at Rio but five years on she is one of the top-tier female sprinters on the planet and taking aim at the sprint double in Tokyo.
A 9/2 shot to win the women’s 100m and 4/1 to take home gold in the 200m, Asher-Smith is probably the biggest threat to dethrone the sprinting powers of America and Jamaica.
Jade Jones
The ‘Headhunter’ is seeking to become the first Olympian in history to win three gold medals in Taekwondo.
Just 19 when she won in London, the Welsh wonder retained her 57kg crown in Rio four years later.
Jones is the number one seed in her division in Tokyo, the reigning world champion, and the 2/5 favourite to strike gold again in the 57kg featherweight section.
Max Whitlock
Whitlock became the first British gymnast to claim Olympic gold in Rio five years ago when he won on the pommel horse and floor.
The 28-year-old also took home bronze in the individual all-around competition to add to the two third-places he achieved in London four years earlier.
He hasn’t quite been as dominant on the pommel as he was in the lead-up to Rio but nonetheless, he remains the man to beat on that apparatus.
Men’s coxless four
Okay, so not quite one athlete but the men’s four deserve a mention as they aim to continue Britain’s dominance in this event at the rowing regatta.
Team GB have won the coxless four in each of the past five Olympics, stretching back to Sir Steve Redgrave’s swansong in Sydney in 2000, and they are 20/29 favourites to land top honours in Tokyo.
All four of this year’s crew are Olympic debutants but the team of Ollie Cook, Matt Rossiter, Rory Gibbs and Sholto Carnegie became European champions in 2019 and followed that up with world championship bronze.
*All odds correct at time of writing.
