"Sent" is a bit generous, as there were no national Olympic committees at the time to organise anything. Most of the British team were expatriates living in Greece, or visiting. Cyclists Battel (about whom very little is known) and Keeping were staff at the British Embassy and were banned from competing before the Embassy bowed to public pressure and let them race; the Marshall brothers were sons of the British consul in Patras (and with their no-show in the tennis competition, Alfred Marshall didn't end up competing at all); and Sidney Merlin had grown up in Greece while his father systematically pillaged antiquities for the British Museum! John Boland just happened to be visiting one of the organisers, an old university friend, and was talked into competing.