Show us your medals: the Olympic funding dividend

Great Britain will send what is claimed to be their “strongest team ever in the modern era” to the Beijing Olympic Games next month and tabled detailed plans yesterday of where a possible 35 medals will come from, which should deliver a projected eighth place in the medals table.

In fact, Team GB have identified 41 possible medals, filtered that through an expected 85 per cent success rate and come up with the 35 that should lift them two places from tenth at the Athens Games four years ago and Sydney in 2000.

For the first time for a British Olympic team, the medal projections have been broken down sport by sport, placing particular expectation on cycling, which is scheduled to deliver six. Given that Britain’s track cyclists won nine golds and two silvers at the World Championships in Manchester in March, six in Beijing would appear to be a conservative estimate. Six golds alone is not inconceivable.

Other sports have set more bullish goals. Athletics is looking for five medals, which, given the injury issues faced by Paula Radcliffe, the marathon runner, appears to be a tall order.

Overall, the target may also seem high. Boycotted Games aside, 35 medals would represent the best Olympics for Britain since 1920. John Steele, the chief executive of UK Sport, said: “The size of the challenge is massive. I would challenge anyone who says that we aren’t pushing this.”

However, 35 medals is only five more than Great Britain won in Athens and seven more than in Sydney. A far greater leap will be required if Britain are to meet projections to finish fourth in the London Games in 2012; Australia have finished fourth in the past two Games with medal totals of 49, in Athens, and 58, in Sydney.

But Britain will start by chasing China up the medal table in Beijing. The immediate countries in the way are South Korea and Italy, although Japan, which was the breakthrough nation in Athens with 16 golds, has warned off any expectation of a repeat performance and targeted only five. Questions can be asked, though, as to how much of that can be believed.

Questions can also be asked as to what extent the flexing of Chinese muscle may harm British aspirations in Beijing. Of Britain's stronger sports, though, only rowing is likely to be seriously affected by Chinese ambition. In cycling the Chinese have qualified for only a small number of events and are not a threat. The nations that may feel Chinese might are the United States and Australia, who will clash with the hosts in the pool.

The picture delivered yesterday was of British Olympic sports moving fast in the right direction, towards the goal for London 2012. Steele said that British athletes are “on target”. What no one can yet guess at is whether China will be pushing hard in 2012 or whether theirs is a one-off campaign and whether Russia will continue to return to former strengths.

For 2012 the issue for Britain is where those extra 15 to 20 medals will come from. One answer was supplied yesterday by Peter Keen, the head of performance at UK Sport: swimming, canoeing, shooting and boxing. “In many ways these sports are exactly where cycling was ten years ago, so why shouldn’t they come through?” he said. Given that Keen, who made the bold claim that this will be the strongest British team of the modern era, was performance director of British cycling ten years ago, he should know. His forecast for swimming was particularly encouraging. “I see swimming as having turned a corner,” he said. “They are starting to learn how to win.”

Another sport that should come cruising through in 2012 is sailing. Medal projections for Beijing have dropped to four from the five won in Athens, although this is largely because of the unpredictable wind conditions in Qingdao. On home seas, it should be another matter.

What Britain will not have in Beijing, though, is a fast start. “If you can get some good early results, it can be contagious,” Keen said. Indeed, Jason Queally’s cycling gold medal early in the Sydney Games seemed to have an extraordinary ripple effect.

In Beijing, though, Britain’s serious gold-medal hopes appear to be concentrated largely around the middle weekend. So expect a slow start, then a glut of medals — then an intense four years while we wait to see where the real gold rush will come from.