UK Athletics set target of winning six to eight medals in track and field events

• UK Athletics have set the target of winning six to eight medals at the Olympics 
• In the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, they claimed just five track and field medals 

UK Athletics have set a target of winning six to eight track and field medals at the Paris Olympics this summer.

If the team hit the lower end of that goal, which has been agreed with funding body UK Sport, it would represent a marginal upgrade on the 2021 Games in Tokyo, where the Brits claimed only five medals after being stripped of their men’s 4x100m bronze when CJ Ujah tested positive for drugs.

The estimate is broadly consistent with the team’s Olympic performances across the past three and a half decades – a period that includes the introduction of lottery funding in 1997 – though it falls some way short of the record-equalling 10 medals brought home from the World Championships in Budapest last year.

Results at world-level in the season before a Games have statistically been proven to be a reliable barometer of what the team will go on to achieve on the bigger stage, which might make the current forecast for Paula Dunn’s squad seem conservative.

The British team, which will be selected on July 1, is expected to be smaller than the flabby delegation of 77 that went to Tokyo, though it will have more medal prospects, led by reigning world champions Josh Kerr and Katarina Johnson-Thompson, as well as Keely Hodgkinson, Zharnel Hughes, Dina Asher-Smith, Jake Wightman, Laura Muir and Molly Caudery, who won pole vault gold at the world indoors this year.

The UKA set-up, which has been funded to tune of £22.7million for the Paris Olympic cycle, has endured familiar turbulence since Budapest, with Dunn appointed as interim head coach in October following the shock departure of Stephen Maguire.