Team GB bosses are ‘FRUSTRATED’ at lack of gold medals at Olympic Games – as chiefs launch review to work out why squad plummeted to lowest finish since 2004

Chiefs say it is ‘frustrating’ that Team GB only finished seventh at the Olympics this time around despite a ‘brilliant’ run of performances.

Team GB suffered their worst performance since the 2004 Athens Games, despite winning 65 medals, the third-highest total in the team’s history.

Now bosses have promised to launch an investigation to find out why Team GB suffered so many ‘near misses’ as they struggled to convert bronze and silver into gold medals.

Team GB took 65 medals, a tally only surpassed by leaders USA and China, but with 14 golds they were also behind Japan, Australia, France and the Netherlands.

“It’s frustrating to be seventh in the medal table. This was an incredibly competitive Olympic Games. The middle part of the medal table between the United States and China feels incredibly competitive,” said Andy Anson, chief executive of the British Olympic Association.

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‘There were near misses. We need to celebrate the medals. We need to do that first, and then as UK Sport, the national governing bodies, ourselves, we need to sit back when we get home and just say, ‘Was there something? Is it sport by sport? Individual issues? Was there something more systemic? Let’s look at the whole scene… but in a controlled way.’

‘I think the breadth of success is incredibly important in terms of the resonance it has across the country – 65 medals is a brilliant achievement.

‘I can’t wait for Los Angeles anyway, because I think it’s [the Olympics] will be even bigger by then. Bring on LA, because we are going to take back the Aussies and climb back up the medal table.’

There were indeed many near misses: the women’s team of four was beaten by 0.19 seconds on the water, Josh Kerr lost by 0.14 seconds in the men’s 1500 metres, while Matt Hudson-Smith was 0.04 seconds behind in the men’s 400 metres.

Anson joked that we could adopt the “American way of counting” [all] ‘medals for the future’ – a system where the American media claimed that they had won the most medals in the early stages.

Normally UK Sport expects 30 per cent of medals to be gold, but this time 14 of the 65 entrants gave them 21.5 per cent.

The organisation’s chair, Katherine Grainger, added: ‘What we’re all going to do is have a period of evaluation of what has worked really well and what hasn’t worked so well.

“Where did we miss some conversions? Where do we get the positive surprises? But I’m sitting here with a sense of peace looking at what the team has done.”

This year’s 65 entrants were one more than the 64 entrants in Tokyo last time, when Team GB finished fourth.

It was also the same number as at the 2012 London Olympics, where the team finished third.