British NOC News
17 December 2024 - Find here the latest news from the National Olympic Committee: events, courses, general assemblies and elections, trophies and much more.
17 December 2024 - Dame Katherine Grainger will be the new BOA Chair, thus becoming the first ever female Chair of the BOA since its establishment in 1905. The 46 members of the NOC recently voted to elect her, replacing the incumbent, Sir Hugh Robertson. Katherine Grainger is the only British woman in history to have won a medal at five successive Olympic Games. Shortly after retiring from her rowing career, she was appointed as the Chair of UK Sport. She will start her initial four-year term after the completion of her second and final term with UK Sport in early 2025. More details here.
10 December 2024 - Olympic champions Bryony Page (trampoline) and Eve Muirhead (curling) have been re-elected to the BOA Athletes’ Commission for a second term following an election last month. They are joined by Olympic bronze medallist Lewis Richardson (boxing), two-time Winter Olympian Charlie Guest (Alpine skiing) and Tokyo 2020 Olympians Emily Muskett (weightlifting) and Jessica Piasecki (athletics), who have been elected to serve their first term on the Commission. Full details here.
17 June 2024 - Ahead of the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Team GB and YoungMinds – the leading mental health charity for young people – have launched Out In The Open, a brand-new video series hosted by triple Olympic Champion in artistic gymnastics Max Whitlock. The three-part series sees Max sit down with a different Team GB star each episode, opening up a relaxed and frank conversation around the varied pressures and challenges that athletes face, both in competition and in their day-to-day lives. The episodes will be aired on Team GB’s YouTube channel. The project has been supported by Olympic Solidarity. More info at www.teamgb.com
03 June 2024 - King Charles III is to become Patron of the BOA. Buckingham Palace confirmed the Patronage to mark the first anniversary of the King’s coronation earlier this month. He takes over the Patronage from the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had been Patron of the BOA since her ascension to the throne in 1952. Full details here.
27 May 2024 - Gold medal-winning curler Eve Muirhead OBE has been named Team GB’s Chef de Mission for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. She will be the second ever female Chef de Mission for Team GB, following in the footsteps of fellow Olympian Georgina Harland, who led the team at Beijing 2022. A four-time Olympian who debuted in Vancouver in 2010, Muirhead was most recently Chef de Mission for Team GB at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Gangwon 2024. Details here. And see how Team GB plans to host free-to-enter Official Fan Zones for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 here.
05 February 2024 - On 26 January, just six months before the Olympic Games Paris 2024, the BOA announced the names of the six children selected to be Team GB’s first ever Mini Mascots. The six, aged from 8 to 11, are from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Yorkshire, Surrey and Cornwall. The Mini Mascots will support Team GB athletes all the way to Paris, from kitting out - when athletes will head to Birmingham to collect their Olympic kit - to local team announcements and participating in Team GB Fanzones. Full details here.
07 November 2022 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) has announced that Team GB medallists from the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 were invited to Buckingham Palace on 2 November for a reception hosted by Their Majesties the King and the Queen Consort. Alongside their Paralympics GB peers, over 80 Team GB athletes met the King, the Queen Consort, The Princess Royal, who is also an IOC Member, and The Earl of Wessex. More details here.
23 May 2022 - David Ross has been appointed as the new independent Chair of the British Olympic Foundation (BOF), the charitable arm of the British Olympic Association (BOA). Ross, aged 56, will replace the outgoing Chair, Neil Townshend. Having served on the BOA Board as a non-executive Director for 10 years between 2011-2021, Ross is currently a serving Board member at the British Paralympic Association. More details here.
11 June 2021 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) has written to the President of the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 to provide assurances that the athletes and staff of Team GB are “doing everything possible to minimise any risk to the people of Japan” ahead of the Olympic Games. In a letter to President Hashimoto Seiko, the BOA’s Chair, Hugh Robertson, outlined additional testing measures for the delegation members prior to departure, over and above the requirements of the Tokyo 2020 Playbooks. Read the full statement here.
31 May 2021 - Gill Whitehead (see photo) has been appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director of the British Olympic Association (BOA), starting in September. As an RFU-qualified rugby coach and former England Students rugby league player, she brings a lifelong passion for sport along with a wealth of senior executive and leadership experience in the broadcast and digital media sector. She has previously worked for Google, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide. More info here.
8 March 2021 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) has appointed Dr Niall Elliott (see photo) as its Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Elliott will work with the BOA on a year-round basis, in addition to Games-time periods, and will fulfil this part-time role alongside his current position as the Head of Sports Medicine at the SportScotland Institute of Sport and as Team GB’s CMO for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Tokyo will be Elliott’s eighth major Games across both winter and summer editions and Commonwealth Games. More details here.
30 October 2020 - On 16 October, the British Olympic Association confirmed Hugh Robertson (see photo) as Chair for a second term, which will take him up to and including the Olympic Games Paris 2024. First appointed in November 2016, replacing Sebastian Coe, Robertson acted as Vice-Chair from 2015. This will be Robertson’s final term – one which has seen Team GB continue to cement its place within the global Olympic landscape. More info here.
16 March 2020 - On the anniversary of the 2011 Japan earthquake, on 11 March, the British Olympic Association announced a partnership with the British Red Cross, with the latter becoming Team GB’s official charity partner for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. The partnership is aimed at inspiring the British public to come together and make a positive difference this Olympic year, supporting people in crisis in the UK and overseas. Full details here.
22 May 2020 - The British Olympic Association announced on 19 May that Team GB has joined up with its official charity partner, the British Red Cross, to celebrate kindness during Mental Health Awareness Week, which runs from 18 to 24 May. Hosted by the Mental Health Foundation, the official theme for this year’s Week is “kindness”. “Kindness is What Makes Us” features a host of Team GB athletes from nine summer and winter sports reciting an emotive poem, highlighting the importance of kindness to ourselves and others to support our mental health, especially within the current climate. Presented alongside the Olympians is a series of images that illustrate people within their communities supporting the British Red Cross during the coronavirus outbreak through simple acts of kindness. More info here.
12 June 2020 - Olympic medallist Georgie Harland (photo) has been appointed as Team GB's Chef de Mission for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, thus becoming the first-ever female Chef de Mission for Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the Olympic Games. A former modern pentathlete, Harland, 42, won bronze at the Olympic Games Athens 2004 in the women’s individual event. Sport Engagement Manager at the British Olympic Association (BOA) for nearly 10 years, she was Chef de Mission at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lausanne 2020 and Deputy Chef de Mission at the Olympic Games Rio 2016, a role which she will replicate for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 next year. Full details here.
05 august 2019 - With one year to go until the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, British athletes gathered to launch a new campaign to inspire the nation to get behind Team GB and showcase the best of British sport around the world. The “Sport is GREAT” campaign will demonstrate the UK’s capacity to inspire millions of people around the globe through sport. New posters and promotional materials featuring the Team GB athletes will be widely displayed and distributed. More info here on the British Olympic Association’s website.
10 December 2018 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) announced the six Olympians elected by their fellow athletes to serve on the 13-strong BOA Athletes’ Commission. Just shy of 800 votes were cast, with over a third of eligible Olympiansand potential Olympians voting in the election, and 21 athletes standing for the six positions.More info here.
30 October 2018 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) has announced that three-time Olympian and former Team GB hockey captain Ben Hawes has been re-elected as the Chair of its Athletes’ Commission. He will serve a further two years. The Commission has 12 members in total, made up of a mixture of past and present athletes from team, individual, summer and winter sports. Full details here.
1st October 2018 - The British Olympic Association announced the launch of a new Get Set+ programme called Think Real, the primary purpose of which will be to inspire young people aged 11-16 to make healthy, informed decisions. The programme was developed by Sport England, UK Anti-Doping, the British Olympic Foundation and the British Paralympic Association, in association with the English Institute of Sport and the National Governing Bodies, to help consider the challenges faced by young people at all levels of sporting involvement. Think Real addresses the links between various health challenges and approaches healthy habits as a whole – helping young people make the links between their nutrition, recovery and physical activity, to consider their all-round health. More details at www.getset.co.uk.
23 July 2018 - The British Olympic Association (BOA) informs us that 2008 women’s 4x400m relay team received their bronze medal from the Olympic Games Bejing 2008 during a ceremony held at the Müller Anniversary Games on 21 July in the London Stadium. Christine Ohuruogu, Kelly Sotherton, Marilyn Okoro and Nicola Sanders were awarded their Olympic bronze medal following the disqualification of Russia’s Tatiana Firova in August 2016 and the disqualification of Belarusian athlete Sviatlana Usovich in November 2016 after a positive doping control. More details here.