WAY back in the mists of time before London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games, the IOC sent their inspectors round all five of the short-listed cities to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

During their visit they made sure they saw every proposed venue and location for the 26 different sports. I was assigned to one bus that stopped at Wimbledon, the proposed venue for tennis, Hyde Park for triathlon and Dorney for the rowing. Even in the cold February light the rowing lake near Windsor looked stunning, steely grey water stretching away from the wood-clad boathouse. All of it brand new, all of it built for one purpose. The inspectors were impressed — it was easy to tell because, just like at Wimbledon, they had no questions.

Last week the lake fulfilled part of that promise. Given the chance to host the second-most prestigious rowing gathering in the calendar, it has performed in style. The wind and water, even in the teeth of a British summer, have remained fair if testing for the competitors. The facilities and infrastructure for the teams off the lake, oiled by the unstinting efforts of the army of volunteers, have been trialled almost up to Olympic level. Lord Coe and the planners in Canary Wharf have just to send along a bloke to daub the Olympic rings on the grandstands and hoardings. After this week, in comparison to many of the other venues of which they are in charge, Dorney can be moved into the “not worried” column.

For those of us close to the sport of rowing itself, however, the success of the venue is less important than the team that wears the Great Britain vest. Personally I do not care where in the world they are, I want to see them winning and winning gold. On that scale, this championships has been below average for Britain. Gone are the years where one gold medal in the Olympic classes was enough for the head coaches to have a satisfied drink in the bar on a Sunday night.

In the 1980s the rowing team was almost a one-boat affair. Steve Redgrave and crew-mates (and there were a succession of us) used to fly the flag in the Olympic boat classes almost alone and it was only in Barcelona, in 1992, when that pattern was changed and changed for good.

In the spring of that year the Searle brothers, Greg and Jonny, first combined in a pair to give first Steve and me, and then the rest of the world a real test. Compared to us, they used to train, mentally prepare and race completely differently.

They used to race for a full season, which entailed half a dozen regattas each summer in the build-up to the World Championships or, once every four years, the Olympic Games, and yet their sum total of medals and victories from these build-up races is outnumbered by their world and Olympic medals almost two to one. They had an uncanny ability to lose almost everything that didn’t matter and miraculously produce a stunning performance when it did. Every year the boathouse gossip was that the British crew with the Searles on board couldn’t be in the frame after that season and every year they would be there on the podium and, what’s more, looking thoroughly cheesed off if they weren’t on the gold medal step.

The disappointing aspect from this year has been that too many of the British finalists have not produced their best when it mattered most. With the exception of the men’s four, most Olympic class crews either raced better earlier in the season or, even worse, earlier in the regatta.

The men’s pair, eight and single combined with both women’s double sculls (lightweight and heavyweight) all had realistic medal chances and yet didn’t convert them. It is a measure of the standards to which the sport is now held but it won’t come as a surprise to the athletes when their coaches fill in the report card not with “must do better” but “must do their best at the right moment”.

The sporting maths of the London Games make for severe reading. Everyone publicly has committed to the British team finishing fourth on the medals table, an effort which will require in the region of 20 gold medals.

If that happens we will have beaten every nation bar three — China, the United States and Russia — putting to the sword the likes of Australia, Italy and Germany. Whichever way the medal table is cut between Olympic classes versus non-Olympic, or able- bodied versus Paralympic I don’t believe we outperformed any of those nations last week.

In 2012 the majority of the gold medal workload will fall almost disproportionately on the successful sports within Great Britain. Alongside the likes of cycling, sailing and athletics, rowing has literally to pull its weight. While we can justifiably celebrate the medals from the past week, the team has six more years to learn something that the Searle brothers had in their veins. Worry only about winning the ones that matter.

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