Team GB

Whatever happened to the United Kingdom? That's what we always used to be called on these occasions, but we now appear to be "Great Britain and N. Ireland". I thought UK was the preferred usage precisely to avoid such awkward terminology. Is it because we now talk about Team GB? And do the Northern Irish, then, not count as part of Team GB? 

I think we should be told.

Comments

[Paul Power]

Mick:

each participant represents a sporting association. Sporting associations tend to be organized along national lines, but not always. After Partition, some sporting associations in Ireland split while others did not - e.g. boxing. In the context of the Olympics, most (if not all) of the non-splitters are considered part of the "Irish" team under the tricolour - even if they are British, See the wiki article on Wayne McCullough for the resulting contortions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_McCullough : "As an amateur, McCullough participated in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea and was asked to carry the Irish flag because he was the youngest member of the team at 18 years old. Even though he lived on the staunchly loyalist Shankill Road area..."

If you read the wiki article on Barry McGuigan carefully, you'll see similar strange things "..McGuigan was born in Clones, Ireland, son of singer Pat McGuigan (died 1987). He represented Northern Ireland in the Commonwealth Games at Edmonton 1978 and represented Ireland at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow...As a non-sectarian sporting ambassador for Northern Ireland, even though he was from the Republic of Ireland...
McGuigan took out British citizenship so that he could compete for British domestic titles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McGuigan

[Mick H]

Thanks for that. It's even more complicated than I thought.

[Sheddie]

What are we being refered to as, by the French announcements, allways the first at the Olympics?
I presume it's still Royaume Uni.