THIS has been a truly remarkable Olympic fortnight for Team GB, but while Britain’s rivals attempt to uncover some underhand explanation for the nation’s stunning series of successes in Rio, the truth is that there is no secret formula to what we have been witnessing.

In sport, as in pretty much every walk of life, money talks. Admittedly, you have to spend it wisely, and UK Sport, the organisation that funds the vast majority of elite Olympic sports, have become adept at linking increased investment to a carefully-planned programme of targeted spending.

But the figures don’t lie and the single biggest factor in the transformation of British Olympic sport over the last two decades has been the advent of the National Lottery, and the decision, taken by John Major’s Conservative Government, to channel a significant proportion of the ‘good causes’ money to sport.

In the four years leading up to the Atlanta Olympics, an event that is regarded as a nadir for Team GB, who finished 36th in the medal table as they won a single gold, the UK Government spent around £5m-a-year funding elite Olympic sport.

The arrival of the Lottery meant UK Sport was able to spend £54m on elite sports in the run-up to the Sydney Games of 2000, and by London 2012, the organisation was investing £264m in the pursuit of Olympic medals.

That figure rose slightly again in the build-up to Rio, to the point where British Cycling’s £30.2m budget for the current Olympic cycle dwarfs the overall figure available to many Olympic associations for the whole of their team competing at the Games.

British Rowing received £32m, sailing, another rich source of medals, was awarded £25.5m and gymnastics, a sport that has transformed itself over the last few years, was able to spend more than £14.6m of UK Sport’s money.

Currently, 25 per cent of the money from National Lottery ticket sales is spent on ‘good causes’, and 20 per cent of that pot is allocated to sport. As so many of Britain’s successful Olympians will attest, the funds have completely transformed the way they train and compete.

In the past, Durham rower Jess Eddie, a silver medallist in the women’s eight, would have had to combine her training with a full-time job. As it is, she has been able to spend the last four years based at British Rowing’s high-performance base in Berkshire, devoting the whole of her time to her Olympic training.

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So far, so good. But while the funding for elite-level sport has grown exponentially in the last two decades, the sums available at the grassroots have either stagnated or, in a large number of cases, dropped away dramatically.

Sport England is the body responsible for the majority of national investment into grassroots sport in England, and its annual budget is £325m. So that’s £325m on the whole of grassroots sport across the length and breadth of the land, compared to around £275m that was spent on the pursuit of Olympic medals in the last four years.

Last December, Sports Minister Tracey Crouch unveiled a new ‘Government strategy for sport’ which aimed to boost “stagnant participation figures”, but last month, Sport England revealed the number of people who play sport or exercise once a week has fallen by 0.4 per cent since London 2012.

Most adults (57 per cent) do not play any sport at all, with participation figures particularly poor for women. Only 31.7 per cent of adult women in England play sport once a week.

The figures are alarming, and suggest that while all might be well at the very top of the tree, the ‘trickle-down effect’ of regular Olympic success has not been forthcoming.

Why? There are clearly a multitude of factors, but just as money is the main explanation for Britain’s recent Olympic success, so it also helps explain why things are not as rosy as the grassroots.

Historically, grassroots sport has been funded in two main ways. The first is through organisations such as Sport England or the Football Foundation, and their budgets have remained reasonably constant over the last decade or so.

The second is via local councils, and this is where the figures become especially alarming. According to Sport England, the amount English councils invested into sport fell by 27 per cent between 2009-10 and 2013-14. That is a reduction of around £389m, and it is estimated that the figures for the last couple of years will be markedly worse.

In an era of austerity and reduced local authority budgets, sporting facilities are increasingly viewed as a luxury that councils cannot afford. Central Government is either unable, or unwilling, to plug the funding deficit, and the effect on local communities can often be dramatic. Facilities close, pitches are ripped up and clubs are forced to disband.

There are plenty of local examples – Glenholme Leisure Centre in Crook closed down in 2011 and the town has been left without a similar facility ever since - and the effects on public health, community cohesion and social wellbeing can be profound.

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Not only that, but by ripping away the grassroots, we are also preventing the next generation of Olympians from getting the grounding they need to kick-start a career in sport.

Amy Tinkler might have spent the last year on British Gymnastics’ centrally-funded high-performance scheme, but it is only a year or so ago that she was training full-time at Spennymoor Leisure Centre. Had that facility not been available to her, she would almost certainly not have been competing in Rio.

Similarly, had Harrogate Borough Council not been paying for a public swimming and diving pool at the Hydro, Jack Laugher might never have taken up the sport that saw him crowned a double Olympic medallist last week. Aimee Willmott, an Olympic finalist in swimming, spent all of her formative years at the publicly-funded Neptune Centre.

If those kind of facilities disappear, the success of Team GB’s Olympians will mean little. Britain’s senior politicians have been quick to latch on to the coat-tails of the nation’s medallists, tweeting their congratulations and planning grand civic receptions in the wake of the Games.

Instead, they should be working out how to fund the whole of British sport to ensure further success is attainable in the future. You can’t be the next Amy Tinkler if you don’t have a floor to perform on.