THE sun spilt over the horizon just shy of 5am. Long before its heat had turned the sky from crimson to blue, the pools, playing fields, cricket nets, tennis courts and the bay and beaches circling The Southport School teemed with activity.

Hundreds of boys began their day in pursuit of sporting excellence against a backdrop of lawns left lush by five days of unseasonal summer rain. In the midst of it all, eight boys are making waves in a corner of the Gold Coast in Australia that British Swimming has made its permanent home-from-home headquarters. These teenagers are the great hopes for 2012, young Britons who will be men when their home Olympic Games roll into London a little over six years from now.

There are no dark, dreary mornings and evenings here, no donning thick coats, scarfs and gloves as a prerequisite to facing a chill that could cost them valuable weeks of training each year. Every weekday they rise at dawn, train from 5.30am to 8am, change into their uniforms on the poolside, walk 100 yards to the breakfast hall before lessons, which end with a further two hours of tutelage in the pool.

For the past six weeks, the young hopefuls have shared the pool with the British home-nation teams heading to Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games, and the Great Britain team will prepare for Beijing’s 2008 Olympics here, too. It has cost Britain not a single penny to use a 12-lane 50-metre facility, the quality and setting of which knocks anything Britain has to offer into a cocked swim cap. A sign on the gate reads: “Private pool — no public access”.

The contract agreed between Bill Sweetenham, Britain’s performance director, and Greg Wain, the Southport School headmaster, is weighted in goodwill. “It’s centred round the boys going to school and boarding here. It costs less than £10k for each of them a year,” Chris Nesbit, a former Royal Marine and the resident Britain coach at Southport, said. “The cost of that at home would be prohibitive.”

Nesbit stands in front of his poolside office, in which a bemused staff member recently found the head coach sniggering like a schoolboy. “I was looking out of the window across the pools. It dawned on me just how amazing this is.

“Less than a mile that way there’s the Southport Club pool with an eight-lane 50-metre pool, 25 and and 33-metre pools, then there’s St Hilda’s with a nine-lane 50-metre pool and a six-lane 25-metre pool. Miami, where Grant Hackett the Olympic 1,500 metres champion) trains is a couple of miles down the coast and . . .” He stops short before concluding: “There are more 50-metre pools in a ten-mile radius here than in the whole of Britain.”

The most obvious thing about the British boarders is their size — they average 6ft 2in and two, aged 16 and 17, are over 6ft 4in. They look Australian. The visitors have helped the Southport School win the fiercely competitive Australian public sector swimming championship trophy for the past two years after an 80-year drought. Last week they lost the crown by a point after disqualification in the medley relay cost them a ten-point lead at an event watched by 7,000.

Among Nesbit’s charges are Adam Brown, a 6ft 5in athlete at 17 whose great grandfather played for Newcastle United, and Marco Loughram, born in London and no longer distracted by playing basketball for Surrey and in a punk-rock school band back home. His ambition? “To win an Olympic gold medal. Hopefully that will be in 2012 when I should be in my prime.”

“I felt we needed bigger people, more athletic, with the right attributes,” Nesbit said. “Take Chris Fox. He’s 6ft 4in, solid at 87kg, just 16 and he takes a size 14 shoe. He’s the right raw material and he’s one of the best competitors I’ve ever come across.” Nesbit’s most successful charge is Katy Sexton, Britain’s first female world champion in 2003, who has been based in Southport since September in an effort to reclaim the Commonwealth 200 metres backstroke title she won as a 16-year-old in 1998.

“I want this to be the best male youth programme in the world,” Nesbit said. “We want to be supplying swimmers who make the Olympic podium in 2012.”

YOUNGSTERS PROVING SPLASH HITS

The eight Britons who are beating the Australians in their own back yard.

CHRIS ALDERTON
Born: Stockon-on-Tees
Age: 18
Home club: Wear Valley
Height: 5ft 10in
Best yet: 1,500 metres freestyle: European Junior Championships bronze medal; European Youth Olympic Days 2004, silver medal; 2004 Olympic trials, third place; British Championships, 2005, silver medal; national age-group champion, 2001; British junior record-holder, 800 and 1,500 metres.

ADAM BROWN
Born: Cambridge
Age: 17
Home club: Hatfield
Height: 6ft 5in
Best yet: European Youth Olympic Days 2005, fourth 400 metres freestyle; national age-group champion, 400 metres freestyle and 200 metres medley

CHRIS FOX
Born: Wolverhampton
Age: 16
Home club: Wolverhampton
Height: 6ft 4in
Best yet: European Youth Olympic Days 2005, bronze medal 100 metres breaststroke

DAVID WASLIN
Born: Beverley
Age: 15
Home club: Kingston upon Hull
Height: 6ft 1in
Best yet: National age-group champion 2003, 1,500 metres freestyle

GRANT TURNER
Born: Swindon
Age: 17
Home club: Tigersharks
Height: 6ft 2in
Best yet: National age-group champion, 50, 100, 200 and 400 metres freestyle

RICHARD CHARLESWORTH
Born: Hertfordshire
Age: 17
Home club: Hatfield
Height: 6ft 2in
Best yet: County champion and junior record-holder 400, 800 and 1,500 metres freestyle; in Britain’s European short-course team 2005; national youth champion 400 metres freestyle

MARCO LOUGHRAM
Born: London
Age: 16
Home club: Guildford City
Height: 6ft 2in
Best yet: European Youth Olympic Days: silver medal, 100 metres backstroke

JAMIE BROOM
Born: Derbyshire
Age: 16
Home club: Derventio Excel
Height: 6ft 1in
Best yet: Junior county champion 200 and 400 metres freestyle

DANIEL COOMBS
Born: Chorley, Lancashire
Age: 17
Home club: Bolton Metro/Gallica
Height: 6ft 1in
Best yet: Australian age-group champion (2004) 200 metres backstroke and 400 metres medley