china sent 380. GB is the host country. It gets automatic entries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_...

1361? Team GB is about 541 strong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summe...

I guess the difference is the inclusion of the non-competing members of the team. http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=231... claims 542 for GB, and 386 for China.

GB has a larger team because it a) made an enormous extra effort and b) automatically qualifies for every sport it enters. Sports such as waterpolo, volleyball, football, and hockey typically admit only the world's top 12 or so of countries. GB probably has an entry in all of them. Being team sports, that adds up.

The interesting thing to see for GB is how far they will fall back in ten years time. They were abysmal in 1996 (one gold), but grew since.

Based on the Australian experience Great Britain will start dropping back in 12 years time (assuming funding for elite sports falls off somewhat like it has in Australia).

You'll get plenty of silver though...

It's also considerably cheaper to field a larger team as the host nation. Or at least, there's so much money being splashed around that the budget for the actual team is peanuts.