What happens to sports kit that never gets worn?

A look at kit wastage in elite sport and what is being done to reduce it. For an elite athlete, pulling on Olympic kit can be the reward for years of sacrifice. But some of that clothing never makes it out of the packaging. Inside a warehouse on England's south coast, boxes are stacked with pristine Team GB clothing from Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026. Tracksuit bottoms, jackets, hoodies and T-shirts sit untouched. Among them are garments created for Olympic opening ceremonies. All of it is unworn. Commercial constraints can make excess stock difficult to shift at scale. Now a new partnership means hundreds of items of surplus Team GB clothing and unsold merchandise will be resold through a specialist platform, with proceeds supporting the British Olympic Association's (BOA) charity arm, the Team GB Foundation.

It is one way of giving sportswear a second life. But why does that surplus exist, and why can perfectly usable clothing be so difficult to pass on? The BOA is far from the only organisation dealing with excess kit – elite sport in general struggles with kit wastage. 5thread, a consultancy specialising in sustainability, estimates that up to 100,000 items of sports kit end up in UK landfill every year. "It is a huge issue and it's also a complex issue," says Joanna