Now five years on from the last Olympics, the biggest-ever Team GB squad for an overseas Games will finally get their chance to compete in just under two weeks time.
Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport (EIS) is one of the country’s leading training venues for British athletes and several members of the bumper squad were born and raised in the Steel City.
Forge Sport take a closer look at some of those names and assesses their chances of bringing home a medal from the Far East.
Lee Thompson – Athletics
24-year-old Thompson, part of the City of Sheffield and Dearne Athletic Club, will team up with Niclas Baker, Cameron Chalmers, Matthew Hudson-Smith and Michael Ohioze in the Men’s 4x400m relay.
Worksop-based Thompson earned his spot on the plane despite running half a second slower than his personal best of 46.20 at the British Olympic trials in Manchester.
The runner, who juggles his training with a job as a full-time accountant, anchored GB Men’s 4x400m Relay team to a bronze medal at the European Indoor Championships in March. He and his teammates will have to perform at the peak of their powers if they are to stand a chance of breaking the dominance of Jamaica and USA on the track.
Caroline Dubois – Boxing
Sheffield is the home of Great Britain’s boxing programme, which has helped to develop the likes of Anthony Joshua and Nicola Adams. Both have gone on to enjoy long and successful careers in the sport.
There is genuine optimism that GB’s team of eleven boxers could also return a sizeable medal haul from Tokyo, and one of those expected to shine is Caroline Dubois.
The surname might sound familiar to fans of the sport; that’s because Caroline is the younger sister of rising heavyweight star Daniel who is already being touted as the future of British boxing.
Caroline, BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2019, will be looking to make her own history in Tokyo, though, and is considered as a strong medal candidate in the lightweight division.
Kim Daybell – Table Tennis (Paralympics)
Sheffield’s Daybell came to public attention during the first lockdown period in 2020 when the medical student put his Paralympic training on hold to return to the frontline of the NHS.
The table tennis star who was born with Poland’s syndrome, a condition which affects the chest muscles on one side of his body, has already competed at two Paralympic Games and won a silver medal for England at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
The 28-year-old only returned to training in Sheffield last August, and although he might be short of time at the table, getting on the podium would be a fairy-tale ending to a remarkable story.
The likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill have done the city proud in the past, and it seems Sheffield could well have a few more names to add to a long and illustrious list of Olympic champions.
