The giant 18,000-piece jigsaw that the Great Britain squad have carried with them to training camps all over Europe for the past four years has been completed well on schedule for Beijing. If only the selection for the men’s squad had proved so straightforward. After a season that has been hit by injury to both the coxless four, the squad’s No 1 boat, and the eight, there are still bits strewn all over the floor.

Tom James’s recovery from a back injury just in time for the last World Cup regatta of the season, in Poznan, Poland, this weekend will finally give Jurgen Grobler, the head coach, a chance to test the competitive mettle of the crew he originally selected two months ago. His lineup of James, Steve Williams, Peter Reed and Andy Hodge have not yet raced competitively and the opening heat of the Olympic regatta is just 55 days away.

To add to the puzzle, the four rowed superbly in the opening regatta of the summer, in Munich, with Tom Lucy a late substitute for James, while a second reshuffled four, with James and Hodge injured, could manage only eighth place in the second World Cup regatta in Lucerne two weeks ago. It was the first time in 16 years that the British four had failed to reach the final of a major regatta, which was hardly the statistic they craved with Beijing so close. Back to square one.

If the strain is beginning to tell on Grobler, he is masking it rather well. In the bright sunshine of a routine morning at the squad’s base in Caversham last week, he was not just putting a brave face on the tale of the two Toms, he was bristling with ambition and defiance. Though secondary to the cause of his team, his own personal record is also under threat. Not since 1972 has he failed to coach an athlete or crew to Olympic gold.

“For the first time since I’ve been here in the UK, we are going to a Games without Matthew [Pinsent],” he says. “Okay, we are a little bit the underdogs, but that’s not so bad. We are going to Beijing with high expectations. The British four does not win a silver medal, it only loses a gold.”

The overwhelming superiority of the British four through the Olympic cycle has largely masked the absence of Pinsent, the four-time gold medallist. Defeat in the last world championships brought a bout of introspection and a change in personnel, with James being brought in to replace Alex Partridge for the new season. The problems since then have been all too familiar: reminiscent of 1992, when Steve Redgrave suffered from colitis in the lead-up to Barcelona; of 2000, when Tim Foster and Ed Coode were fighting for the fourth seat in Sydney; and of 204, when before Athens, Coode was a late substitute for the injured Partridge.

Each time, Grobler had the reassuring presence of Pinsent to bolster his confidence. So who will be his Pinsent this time?

“The stroke man is key,” he says without hesitation, which means Andy Hodge “He’s very experienced now, physically very strong, he has already a lot of what Steve and Matthew had, that glint in his eye and the instinct. He isn’t a copy of Steve or Matt, but there are a lot of parallels in his performance and his approach to training and racing.

“It’s nothing against the others, he cannot do it on his own, but he’s the key guy. He can make the difference.”

As Grobler has spent four years distancing this four from the past, he clearly feels that the time is right for the 29-year-old to take on the mantle once worn by Redgrave and Pinsent. There is no time to lose. “We’ve got to put everything on the line,” Grobler says. “We’ve got to get the next 50 days absolutely right, every session. They know that, Andy knows that. Dedication, lifestyle; this chance comes only once in every four years and for some people only once. You can’t buy a gold.”

It is Lucy’s youth and raw power against the experience and technical skill of James for the final seat, yet unless injury strikes again or the four perform poorly in Poland, it is probable that the original lineup will stay the same for China. Grobler will not commit himself on the selection sheet until he knows that the latter Tom is fully race fit. The bonus is that Lucy, a former world junior champion in the coxless four and a bronze medallist in the senior eight at the last world championships, has shown himself to be a formidable competitor, rising almost effortlessly from the junior to senior ranks and proving an inspired substitute for James in Munich, where the four produced their most impressive row for almost a year.

“It was outstanding, a bit scary,” says Grobler. Originally selected to row the pair, Lucy has been elevated to the eight, which still has time to develop, like the Sydney eight, into a gold medal-winning crew.

These are still testing times for Grobler, whose decision to compete in Lucerne with only half of the selected crew of the coxless four was open to criticism. In hindsight, the defeat was not only unnecessary, but potentially ruinous. The margins are already slender and the Camelot-sponsored four cannot afford any more mishaps in Poland. “It’s like a good cook, you know all the ingredients, but how much you put in is down to instinct,” says Grobler.

The concern is that the four, whichever Tom takes the final seat, will arrive on the start line in Beijing looking distinctly undercooked.

The paradox in all this is that this British squad, men and women, scullers, sweep and lightweights, is the strongest assembled for any Olympic Games. Medals could come from almost any one of the 11 crews qualified to compete. Grobler, though, is not much taken with the idea that the quantity of medals might be some compensation for quality. “British rowing has to put some gold on the table,” he mutters. “No question.”

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