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It’s hard to remember there ever being a better summer of sport for Britain and what a start to the ‘golden decade of British sport’. The feats of Bradley Wiggins and Rory McIlroy before the end of the Games are almost distant memories given the more recent – and staggering achievements of Team GB, Andy Murray and the Ryder Cup team. Much has been made of the legacy of the Games but what does that mean beyond screen-filled competitive drama? British cycling is thriving like never before and can even claim to have helped Britain’s lagging retail sector with Halfords, the UK's biggest bike traders reported a 14.7% jump in bike sales in the three months to the end of September. On top of this Sky announced yesterday (11th October) that it had prematurely smashed its 2013 target of getting 1 million Brit’s cycling regularly. One area that can also claim a leap forward is women’s sport. An unprecedented 70,584 spectators supported the Team GB football stars as they took on Brazil in their group-game contest whilst female boxing was put on the map by Nicola Adams. Such was her impact (literally and figuratively) that not only are boxing gyms seeing more girls show up to train but the sport has now been selected for the Glasgow 2014 Games for the first time in the event’s history. While the increased numbers of participation help to serve the summer’s legacy, Rebecca Hopkins, MD of ENS, a London sports agency , says the triumphs off-court are just as important: “The summer of sport has been amazing to live through and has undoubtedly left a myriad of happy memories in millions of minds. However for the Games’ legacy aspirations to be realized that is not enough – and to my mind it isn’t just about the sporting endeavours on track, field, court and pitch. British sport isn’t all about tracksuits; there are a lot of us ‘suits’ too. “Clearly the more people doing sport the better, whether it is young people who are the future of professional sport or adults who realize just how personally rewarding sport can be. On the flip side of this – and I say this as the MD of a sports public relations firm – I would like to see the business side of sport flourish too. “Many British companies proved their metal during the London Olympics and it would be great to see those businesses go on to better things. The Olympics was the first event in a ‘golden decade of sport’ but it wasn’t always easy for British companies to win Olympic tenders – not that our track record on and off the medal podium has been proved, I hope the rest of the events staged here will embrace our hard-won expertise.”
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