Unworn Team GB kit from Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026 to be resold from south coast warehouse

Inside a warehouse on England's south coast on 2026-10-12, boxes of pristine, unworn Team GB clothing from Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026 are being prepared for resale under a new partnership, with proceeds directed to the Team GB Foundation. The initial launch will include 700 items from Paris 2024 as part of an effort to give surplus sportswear a second life.

Excess kit is created for several reasons, including orders placed before final athlete selections are known and contractual arrangements that supply non‑transactional product, according to Joanna Czutkowna of 5thread. 5thread estimates up to 100,000 items of sports kit end up in UK landfill every year. Czutkowna, director of 5thread and a doctoral researcher in sports apparel and the circular economy, said: "It is a huge issue and it's also a complex issue." She added: "A lot of this kit is bought before they know which athletes are going to complete in the sport or the event. So there's a lot of excess stock generated at the point of order."

Performance demands and contract terms further restrict reuse, Czutkowna said, noting that sponsorship and innovation concerns can prevent clothing reappearing on the open market. "Also, the types of contracts that you get for this have something called value in kind, so it's not a transactional contract. There's almost an incentive to get free product," she said, and later warned: "Contracts can prohibit reuse because they don't want it on the market or there might be a particular innovation that they want to hold back." The scale of uncounted surplus is heightened because kit can sit in warehouses or athletes' garages without entering official waste streams, and Uefa estimates up to 60% of professional team apparel, external is disposed of at the end of the season, although this figure has not been independently verified.

Adam Stevens, co‑founder of resale platform Kitround, said sponsorship and supply agreements remain important to sport but that there are ways to allow clothing to be reused while respecting those deals. "There are an awful lot of people, whatever sport they do, whatever teams they support, who simply can't afford to buy new," he said.

British kitesurfer Lily Young, training off the coast of Weymouth and targeting a place at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, described how the search for a competitive edge produces usable surplus. "That does mean that we also end up with a lot of waste, a lot of things where you're like, 'this is basically brand new, but it's not quite good enough to maybe win'," she said, adding that athletes pass T‑shirts to younger squad members and youth teams and that wetsuits and other equipment can be reallocated.

Some organisations are already using specialist resale platforms to move second‑hand elite kit to the public at reduced prices, including Sail GP and the Royal Yachting Association, the article reports. Jen Rouse, managing director of the Team GB Foundation, said ordering is becoming more precise and the amount left over is reducing; the organisation is also considering producing some clothing without dates or event‑specific names and exploring opportunities for athletes to return items. She rejected the suggestion that surplus stock has simply accumulated: "It's not necessarily been sitting gathering dust in storage. It's always found a way out," she says.

The partnership with Kitround provides an additional sales route that will channel proceeds to the Team GB Foundation and forms part of an aim to keep clothing and equipment in use through reuse, repair and resale. Stevens summed up the principle behind the initiative: "A kit was made to be worn. It was made to be out there on the field, on the water, in the pool, and it should be back out there. "That's really what underpins everything - making sure this kit doesn't go to landfill and that it can have a second life."