{"id":33130,"date":"2026-01-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=33130"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:03:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:03:05","slug":"team-gb-always-strive-to-create-an-olympic-home-from-home-for-athletes-and-staff-and-the-performance-benefit-is-clear","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/team-gb-always-strive-to-create-an-olympic-home-from-home-for-athletes-and-staff-and-the-performance-benefit-is-clear\/","title":{"rendered":"Team GB always Strive to Create an Olympic Home from Home for Athletes and Staff \u2013 and the Performance Benefit Is Clear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 27 Jan 2026 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Team GB always Strive to Create an Olympic Home from Home for Athletes and Staff \u2013 and the Performance Benefit Is Clear<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/team-gb-always-strive-to-create-an-olympic-home-from-home-for-athletes-and-staff-and-the-performance-benefit-is-clear\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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In the first of two articles on the topic, the British Olympic Association\u2019s Paul Ford explains that comfort, familiarity and safety are not nice to haves, but essentials to help people thrive when it matters most.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By Paul Ford MBE<\/h6>\n
As Team GB prepares to deliver a successful Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, the British Olympic Association also has a firm focus on the future.<\/h6>\n

We have long since secured Stanford University as our main team preparation base for Los Angeles 2028. We did the groundwork starting in 2023, and planning is well underway with our sports to do warm weather camps there this year. Likewise, we are on the cusp of announcing our in-competition High Performance Centre in LA to support us at Games-time as well.<\/p>\n

We believe that securing the best multi-sport facilities is an essential component of helping British Olympians to perform at their best, as I hope to explain below. And its importance is why we\u2019re already underway on Brisbane 2032!<\/p>\n

Creating a home from home<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much has been written and said about British athletes enjoying their tea, baked beans and tomato ketchup in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Paris outside of the Olympic Village bubble within our Team GB exclusive Preparation Camp and in-competition High Performance Centres, but there is a clear performance benefit in having access to these bare necessities.<\/p>\n

The media understandably focus on those elements because it forges a connection between the athletes and the public they represent. These may be highly skilled performers, but they are regular human beings too; and if people feel safe, happy and comfortable, they tend to perform better when it matters most. Support staff just as much as the athletes. Everyone on our team has a role to play, and we need them to all perform their best.<\/p>\n

It dawned on us ahead of the 2012 London Games, where we, as hosts, were afforded a huge opportunity, but equally given a broader challenge too. We took 541 athletes, which was approximately two-thirds more than we would normally take. We had to find a way of uniting this extended team above and beyond what we would normally do.<\/p>\n

One element is our belief that all our athletes and sports come together as \u2018One Team GB\u2019 (which conceptually we\u2019ll explore in the second article). Another element is more structural: we needed to find a space where we could be exclusively just who we were: Team GB. Extending our normal multi-sport pre-Games Preparation Camp at Loughborough University was one thing, but we needed an exclusive in-competition hub as well beyond just our residential space in the Olympic Village during competition.<\/p>\n

It is still largely unknown that we were able to build our own hub within the London Olympic Village (very much a host nation benefit) as we traded off space for our full bed allocation within the main accommodation blocks. So while we were able to pull strings with the Organising Committee (as all host nations do) when we finished in London we looked and thought: \u2018it\u2019s not home advantage necessarily, we just need to be more creative\u2019.<\/p>\n

It provoked a question: how do we create an optimal physical way of uniting the team within the Games environment? Part of it was using our Olympic Village residential space smarter. But you can\u2019t expect this of the local organising committee to do on our behalf, since their brief is so vast. Instead, we decided to take it out of their hands. And for each of the subsequent Summer Olympics we have found an out-of-village space exclusively for our use.<\/p>\n

The benefits are significant. When athletes arrive in the Olympic Village, they are greeted by chaos. With all those different nations in the same place at the same time, it is not conducive to rest and relaxation. Our in-competition High-Performance Centres in Rio, Tokyo and Paris provided a stress valve; a haven that removed British athletes from the chaos and the noise. Our \u2018Performance Lodge\u2019.<\/p>\n

At each of those games we set up the Performance Lodge in local schools, near the Village. These are multi-purpose spaces that no-one is using in the periods in with the Games take place, as it\u2019s the summer holidays. We can effectively go in and do a \u2018DIY SOS\u2019 for 72 hours and flip around several classrooms into, say, medical spaces, lounges or meeting areas for family and friends; we can build boxing rings in their sports gymnasium; we can install our own catering services for the team. It creates an in-competition environment to support performance readiness for GBR athletes and staff only. It complements and cultivates the team feel and supports optimal recovery & regeneration at the same time.<\/p>\n

Nothing left to chance<\/strong><\/p>\n

We go by the name British Olympic Association most of the time as the National Olympic Committee for Great Britain & Northern Ireland, but when it comes to competition we flip into Team GB mode.<\/p>\n

We know our place in the congested British sporting landscape: we are solely concerned with delivering the team to the Games. We try to take the other stakeholders on a journey, including the National Governing Bodies, UK Sport as the funding agency, the UK Sports Institute and home countries sports institutes. To ensure everyone is clear what the plan will be. Crucially, we aim for no surprises at the Games.<\/p>\n

We plan and deliver nine Games and Youth Festivals every four years. As illuded to above, whilst we could just plan one at a time, in chronological order, we do it concurrently, as to achieve what we want to we need to work ahead of our competitors.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, we have secured Stanford University as our primary preparation base for the 2028 Olympics. We believe this is a massive coup, again, because we\u2019re going to be able to transition our athletes through the nine-hour time zone shift, get over the 12-hour flight fatigue, adapt to the California summer heat, and do final technical training in a world class environment. They\u2019re going to be able to do that in our exclusive controlled bubble and be forged as a united team. Critically, they\u2019ll be comfortable and familiar by the time they go into the Olympic Village with being around each other from other sports, which only happens once every four years. For many this, if not planned for, can be a massive derailer, a shock to the system, and scupper performance.<\/p>\n

But for us to have confidence in that Preparation Camp, we must test it. We must run that Camp environment multiple times as best we can beforehand because we\u2019re working with a university that has never hosted an Olympic team before and new hotels who have never had such an array of requirements. The Camp alone in 2028 will be a five-week performance operation. We\u2019ll have individual sports go there this summer, and in 2027 where we\u2019ll run a bespoke multisport camp too. We don\u2019t leave anything to chance. We simulate and test. Hopefully we flush out as many things that could go wrong as possible. The east coast of Australia will get the same treatment ahead of 2032.<\/p>\n

\u2018The most-local non-local team\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet things can and do go wrong, which is where our planning and diligent solutions-oriented mindset comes into its own. In Paris, there was, as widely publicised, some challenges with the athlete dining experience in the Olympic Village. It\u2019s complicated to cater for ~16,000 people in one dining hall. Local Organising Committees are almost setup to break at points given the enormity of the task they are given. Yet it\u2019s the most important moment for an Olympian to have everything just perfect. That\u2019s where we must be solutions based and see the opportunities, have the Plan B and C ready. So, in Paris, when this became tricky, rather than just moaning and complaining, we went into action, and that\u2019s where our Plan B came in. We worked with the affected sports and transported athletes to our Performance Lodge and double our services covers to supplement the affected athletes performance nutrition to aid recovery. It came at a significant additional cost to us, but we had to do it.<\/p>\n

Though not the same issues, this was not a first. There is always a curve ball at a Games. And truth be told we like it. As we have always thrived in adversity and used it as a performance opportunity. In Tokyo, the obvious one, we had to manage the pandemic and layered COVID complications at the Games. It remains a point of pride that we were the only \u2018big\u2019 nation to get every athlete who travelled to the Games to make the start line of their event, and to perform. The results spoke for themselves.<\/p>\n

As an example, there were restrictions on numbers in the Olympic Village, and a limitation on how early teams could bring athletes into the Olympic Village. For nations travelling across multiple time zones, from climates not like the intense heat and humidity of a Japanese summer this was a performance inhibitor. But we did get in early. That\u2019s because of some solid groundwork and efforts with the locals in the years in advance. We achieved special dispensation and were able to bring the Team into country to acclimatise and prepare in our own unique bubble in the city of Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. It gave us, again, a massive performance advantage. It was not by chance (though we couldn\u2019t predict the pandemic obviously), but we achieved this exemption because we had worked so hard in advance to win the hearts and minds of our hosts beforehand. They saw us as their local team.<\/p>\n

In 2019, a year before the originally planned Tokyo Games, we held a series of community engagements at our Preparation Camp base in Yokohama, to test things, and connect with the locals. Swimmers Adam Peaty and Duncan Scott, for example, brought their medals from Rio and put them around kids\u2019 necks at an open swim session. That was a \u2018money can\u2019t buy moment\u2019. We are incredibly privileged with what we represent and are custodians of the Olympic values. Bringing it to the communities that the Games affect is so important. Yokohama city officials saw and truly felt this, which is why they were so supportive of us still going through the Preparation Camp in 2021, ahead of the rescheduled COVID Games. That\u2019s not something we had planned for but was a consequence of undertaking that process properly.<\/p>\n

Similarly in Rio, we set ourselves a challenge: when Brazil isn\u2019t cheering for Brazil, how can we encourage Brazil to cheer for Team GB? Again, this was off the back of a Home Games and seeing the power of what having loud and enthused crowds could do for our athletes. We approached that in two ways. At our Preparation Camp in Belo Horizonte, one hour north of Rio, we invited local children to Athletics and Rugby 7s training sessions prior to the Games. It built that connection and was reported in the local media. We were seen as \u2018the most local non-local team\u2019. We also did a series of community engagements, including sending our boxing, judo and taekwondo athletes into favelas within the greater Rio area. It carried an element of risk, but we had the mindset of this work being the right thing to do. When adversity ensued in Rio as the system creaked during the Olympic Games, the locals supported us with whatever we needed.<\/p>\n

And so, wherever Team GB athletes go, whenever they attend an Olympics, we plan, prepare and deliver an all-encompassing home from home model. Everything is centred on the athletes.<\/p>\n

Through following the principles above, all the athletes need to do is arrive and execute their best performances when it matters most. The results take care of themselves.<\/p>\n

Paul Ford is the Head of Sport at the British Olympic Association. If you would like to speak to Paul, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read part two<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How Team GB sets the stage for British Olympians to write their Own Stories<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n