More than a quarter of people in Britain think they could qualify for the next Olympic games if they were to start training today, a new survey has revealed.
The survey, which was produced by YouGov, invited members of the public to indicate if they believed they could become an Olympic-level athlete within the next four years across 25 different sports.
As the 2024 Olympics draw to a close, 27% of those surveyed believe that they could make it to the LA 2028 games in at least one of those sports.
The most common discipline people favoured their chance at was in the 10m Air Rifle Shooting, with 15% believing they could either ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ qualify.
The next most popular responses were archery (13%), badminton (10%) and table tennis (9%).
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However, confidence was low among those surveyed when it came to more physically demanding sports such as rhythmic and artistic gymnastics, diving, rugby sevens and skateboarding – only 3% believe they could qualify for these disciplines.
Overall, younger respondents were more confident than their older counterparts, with 17% believing they could qualify for archery, table tennis and the 100m sprint events.
Those aged 18-24 were by far more confident in their chances at the 100m sprint – for those aged 25 and above, only 2-7% believe they could qualify for the blue-riband event of athletics.
Male respondents were also noted to be more confident than females, with more men than women believing they could compete in all but four of the 25 events.
Of those four events, the largest difference was noted in the 100m breaststroke, with 9% of women believing they could compete in this event by 2028 compared with just 4% of men.
