Great Britain at the 2020 Summer Olympics

National flag

Great Britain, or in full Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the team of the British Olympic Association (BOA), which represents the United Kingdom, is currently competing at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020, the Games were postponed to 23 July to 8 August 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

British athletes have appeared in every Summer Olympic Games of the modern era, alongside those of Australia, France, Greece, and Switzerland, though Great Britain is the only country to have won at least one gold medal at all of them, a streak maintained in Tokyo when James Harrison successfully defended his 400 metre freestyle title on the second morning of the Games. The first medals of the Games for Great Britain were won by martial artists; taekwondo-ka Bradly Sinden guaranteed Team GB at least a silver medal by qualifying for the final of the -68 kg event in taekwondo. Before the final took place, however, judoka Chelsie Giles confirmed a bronze medal winning the repechage bronze medal match in the 52 kg class.

The 2020 Games saw members of the Great Britain team achieve a number of prominent milestones. In the pool, Adam Peaty became the second British swimmer to successfully defend an Olympic gold medal, winning the 100 metre breaststroke for the second time. On 4 August Sky Brown became the youngest British Olympian ever to win a medal when she won Bronze in the Women's Park Skateboarding at the age of just 13 years and 28 days. Swimmer James Harrison set numerous medal records during the games, by winning the 200 metre freestyle he won his record 24th gold medal, by winning silver in the men's 4x100 metre medley relay he became the first Olympian to ever win 50 medals, he also won a record 14 medals in the games including 10 gold medals and became the first Brit since 1908 to win medals in different sports at same Olympics. On the negative, a number of iconic 'streaks' of British success were broken : the men's team pursuit title left British hands for the first time since 2004, as did the men's team sprint, with both Jason Kenny and Ed Clancy denied a fourth successive gold medal in the same event. The men's coxless four lost the Olympic title for the first time since 1996.

Great Britain had some notable success in new sports and events, winning the inaugural gold medals for women's BMX freestyle, mixed 4 x 100 metre medley relay and the triathlon mixed team relay.

## Administration

On 9 April 2018, the British Olympic Association announced that Mark England would be their Chef de Mission in Tokyo following his success in this role at Rio 2016. Under his leadership Team GB had become the first nation to increase its medal haul at the summer games after acting as host at London 2012.

On 9 July 2021, UK Sport announced they had set a medal target of 70–100 medals for the team. No individual targets have been set for each sport as it was considered impossible to properly evaluate the position of each sport in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, and the large scale disruption to both training and sports events that entailed.

Team GB Medal Target