GB athletes need to harness AI for future success

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Great Britain's Olympic and Paralympic teams are going to need to harness artificial intelligence and work together more closely in order to continue their success at recent Games, UK Sport chairman Nick Webborn says.

In his first interview since taking up the role, the head of the elite sport funding agency told BBC Sport: "We've been a really successful nation, and to maintain that position or to even go higher, we're going to have to do things differently.

"It's about how we think smarter now, how we utilise things like AI appropriately in sport, how we work together as different sports bodies, rather than in silos.

"I think we're now in a frame of mind where we're united and moving together, that sharing of information between sports is happening much more than ever before.

"And we're going to need to do that to maintain ourselves in our position on the medal table."

This year, UK Sport announced British athletes would be offered a new form of AI-based protection from online abuse, and Webborn wants the technology to help with talent ID, injury prevention and remote classification assessments in Paralympic sport.

Team GB's 65 medals at the last summer Olympics at Paris 2024 equalled their haul at London 2012.

However, their tally of 14 gold medals saw them drop from fourth to seventh place in the medal table, their lowest position for 20 years.

"We want to continue to punch above our weight. We always have done," says Webborn.

"And it's those little things, how we convert those silvers into gold, that just push you up that medal table a little bit higher.

"The Paralympic team have been brilliant, they've been second in the medal table behind China for the last several Games, but other nations are pushing them. But I believe the character and the innovation that we have in the UK will continue to keep us there.

"The collaboration between Olympic and Paralympic sports has never been better. You can definitely see that in the discussions that they're having. We're learning from each other."

UK Sport has not yet revealed a medal target for the upcoming Winter Games in Milan and Cortina in Italy, but Webborn is optimistic.

"The current group of athletes are having some amazing success in this early season, it's great to see. That doesn't always transfer into medals at the Games, but we're in a really good place," he says.

Team Paralympics GB pose for photographs after arriving by Eurostar

'Critically important'

As the most senior figure in British Olympic and Paralympic sport, Webborn also says he wants to place renewed emphasis on "valuing the athletes who come into our high-performance sports system, and preparing them for their later life, so that the skills that they learn being a high-class athlete actually make them a better person, a happier member of society.

"I think that's something we need to focus on, because you're only an athlete for a certain number of years, there's a lot more of your life."

Following a spate of athlete welfare controversies following Rio 2016, UK Sport's "no-compromise" approach, linking funding to medal potential, came under intense scrutiny. Under the leadership of Webborn's predecessor Dame Katherine Grainger, the body then said it would win "the right way", and introduced a number of reforms designed to improve duty of care.

When asked if that was more important to him than winning medals, Webborn said: "No, they're both there. It's to win and to win well. That's the mantra that we have at UK Sport.

"It's about the way that we win, both clean sport, [and] the people and behaviours that we have throughout the whole high-performance system, with the coaches, the support staff, that's critically important to me.

"There have been issues in sport in the past about safety and behaviours, and by changing that ethos, making people feel cared for and valued throughout their time in the sport, it will make them better athletes, but also better people in the future.

"One of the things for me is understanding what happens to those people post-career…because if you're a parent thinking about putting your child into a high-performance system, you want to know not just 'are they going to win a gold medal', but 'what are they going to be as people, what's their future look like post-sport?'.

"If we can give them that confidence then that's going to be probably the best advert for parents to put children into the high-performance system.

"I would like athletes to leave the system content with the care that they had during it."

'Aspiration' to host Olympics again

As well as funding elite athletes, UK Sport is tasked with ensuring Britain stages the world's biggest events. Britain is hosting the European Athletics Championships in 2026, the starts of the men's and women's Tour de France cycling races in 2027, and the football men's Euros in 2028. It is also bidding for the 2029 World Athletics Championships and 2035 women's football World Cup.

"I think what we need to think about [is] when's our next time to bring the Olympics and Paralympics back to the UK", Webborn says.

"We're probably going be looking at 2040-ish, but it always has to be an aspiration in the back of your mind. Wasn't that brilliant in 2012? I'd love for other members of the British public to have those memories too."

When asked how realistic a bid was, and if it would need to be staged in London, Webborn said: "I don't think we can talk about realism now, we can talk about aspiration. It could be somewhere else, it could be twin cities, it could be Liverpool and Manchester co-hosting it. So I think we need to be open, and we need to be creative in our thoughts around it."

Aged 25, Webborn sustained a severe spinal injury during a rugby match, which he says "completely changed my attitude to life". Having undergone months of rehabilitation, he then became a research pioneer into the needs of para-athletes, before going on to chair the British Paralympic Association, working on 13 Paralympic Games.

"'I've seen this evolution, the impact lottery funding has made on high-performance sport in the UK, and now almost 30 years on from that, how that's changing people's lives, changing sport, and the amazing success we've had as a nation," he says.

"It is a tough time for the nation at the moment economically…we need to rediscover that pride in the nation, which I think has been lost a little bit. There's this discussion and division at the moment. Sport can help to bring people together around brilliant, iconic moments that we will see on the television. We'll see in LA in 2028, and in Milan - Cortina in a couple of months.

"I've always been amazed about the power of sport to lift people…so for me to be in a position to help continue to drive that forward is a great privilege and a great honour."

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