At the British Olympic Association (BOA), we are particularly proud of our heritage and history, and not least the part that British Olympians have played in creating that golden thread through time.

In the build up to the original 2020 Games much of our focus was on 1964 and the cohort of athletes that first competed in Tokyo with the Union flag on their vests. Such luminaries as Dame Mary Peters and Anita Lonsborough among them.

The 2020 Games was to signal the first time we had been back to Tokyo as a team and we felt that it was important to recognise not only the efforts of the class of ’64, but the legacy they left and the important learnings they could pass on.

It is the first time we return to a host city – other than London – where competitors from the Games are still here to tell their tales. As we move into 2021 the 1964 vintage will remain an inspiration for all of us to draw upon.

However, the moving of the Games by a full calendar year from 2020 to 2021 due to COVID-19 has provided us with an opportunity to look back yet further into our history. In fact, 2021 will now give us the symmetry of the Games-year being exactly 125 years on from the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.

Just ten known British Olympians competed in Greece back then, and did so without the modern trappings of support staff, training facilities, paid-for travel and kit. Indeed, they competed several years before the BOA was even formed. Their names are Launceston Elliot, Charles Gmelin, George Marshall, Grantley Goulding, George Robertson, Edward Battel, Frederick Keeping, Sidney Merlin, John Boland and Frank Marshall.

They were pioneers. They might not have known it at the time, but their presence and their participation as British Olympians set in motion a movement in our country that, 125 years on, endures. Quite simply, the British Olympic spirit is indefatigable.

No Olympic Games – summer or winter editions – have since happened without British representation, and in doing so Britain has also secured at least one gold medal in every edition of the Summer Games, even at its nadir at Atlanta 1996 where Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent rowed to glory in the coxless pairs and secured the only British victory of the Games.

Redgrave is arguably Britain’s greatest Olympian with his five consecutive gold medals, but the names of countless more trip off the tongue - Daley Thompson, Chris Hoy, Seb Coe, Jess Ennis-Hill, Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny, Ann Packer, Adam Peaty, Jack Beresford, Lynn Davies, Ben Ainslie, Nicola Adams… I could go on.

Many chapters have already been written in this rich 125-year history and soon it will be time to write the next.

In July 2021 over 370 British and Northern Irish athletes will make the return journey to Tokyo for Team GB - the modern iteration of the British team - and in doing so they will create their own history and legacy as well as inspire the next generation to take up the line of distinguished and talented British Olympians.

The athletes, who were just four months out from competing in Tokyo in 2020, deserve a special mention for their resilience and positivity during what has been an incredibly difficult time, where careers were put on hold, training limited and competition decimated. They have been proactive and innovative in their pursuit of staying in shape, while it was also heartening to hear so many stories of athletes playing their part in a different team, that of their local community.

These athletes, just as much as their predecessors, are the embodiment of the Olympic spirit and it is our great hope that in 2021 we get to see them do what they do best on the track, the field or in the pool. With that, I can think of no more fitting way than celebrating 125 years of Great British Olympians.