Paris Olympics 2024

Who can become a top Olympian in Great Britain?

As the Paris Olympic games comes to an end, our research looks at the athletes bringing home medals for Team GB. This includes the school type attended by athletes, to learn more about their socio-economic backgrounds.

This is information which for most Olympians is relatively widely available, and while not a perfect measure, one which can give us a crucial insight into the social and economic circumstances they grew up in – with private school attendance in particular strongly related to family income.

Do Team GB’s medallists come from a range of different socio-economic backgrounds, or do those from wealthier homes dominate?

This research also looks at the university attendance of our top athletes, to better understand the educational pathways they take enroute to the Olympic games.

33% of Team GB’s medallists attended fee paying schools, a 7pp reduction since Tokyo in 2021.
52% of the country’s medallists were educated at comprehensive schools and 8% went to grammars.
Over time progress has not been linear. The proportion of privately educated medallists has gone up and down, with 40% of medallists privately educated in Tokyo in 2021, 31% in Rio 2016 and 36% in London 2012.
But there are still some Olympic sports that remain more heavily dominated by the privately educated, including rowing, equestrian events and swimming.
Eton appears to be losing its previous Olympic dominance. Between 1992 and 2016, an Old Etonian won a medal at every Olympic Games. But more recently, there were no Team GB medallists from Eton in 2021 in Tokyo (although an Old Etonian did win a medal for Denmark in those games), or in the Paris Olympics.
Our top Olympians were considerably more likely to have attended private school than this summer’s men’s Euros football team (15%), and the women’s football World Cup squad in 2023 (0%).
60% of medallists attended university, an increase from the 55% of medallists in 2021, compared to about 50% of young people going on to university by the age of 30 in the wider population. 2% attended Oxford or Cambridge universities, a broadly similar proportion to the population overall (1%).

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