Graphic: Beijing target: 35 medals, eighth in table

For some of those accompanying Team GB, these Olympic Games can only be looked at with an eye to four years in the future. The Athens Games four years ago failed to live up to the event put on by Sydney, Atlanta in 1996 fell well short of Barcelona and London does not want to be remembered as a poor relation to Beijing.

Having stared up at a string of hulking, world-class and overwhelmingly new venues, the latest thing to take the collective breath away has been the standard of the Olympic Village. “Outstanding - probably the best Olympic Village ever,” Simon Clegg, the Team GB chef de mission, said. “It raises the bar for future organising committees.

“We've gone from two to three-storey buildings to six to nine storeys and got a lot more people in single rooms. There's lots of open space between the buildings, which gives them a really good feel. There are some stunning aspects, including the water features, the mature trees and the statues they have got in there.”

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All that talk about the target of finishing in eighth place is a load of nonsense

Simon Barnes

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And if “outstanding” was Clegg's view of the village, he came up with another superlative to describe the venues. “Inspirational,” he said. “You cannot help but be impressed.”

Those views were echoed by David Brailsford, the performance director for cycling, in which there will be a high expectation for Great Britain to win medals. “The velodrome is superb, the BMX course is fantastic,” Brailsford said. “The road course is not typical - there's a long hill - but it's spectacular, going by the Great Wall. But normally, if there's something a bit wrong, there's a bit of trepidation. There is none of that here. They [the athletes] just say they want to race.”

While claiming that Beijing's budget would far exceed London's, Lord Moynihan, the BOA chairman, is relishing his city's turn to play host in 2012. “They've set a challenge for us in London, no question about it,” he said. “It will be a tough task to meet the quality we've seen here in Beijing. We're up for it.”

The BOA is forecasting a “significant improvement” in Britain's medal haul in Beijing, compared with their tenth place in the Athens table with nine gold medals. Some predictions have had Britain doubling their gold medal tally and finishing fourth in Beijing, but the target of UK Sport, the funding body, is ten to 12 golds and 35 medals, and an eighth-place finish in the table. The BOA is playing down predictions of a finish of fourth-best nation.

Lord Moynihan said: “We do have a very strong team, better financed and better resourced than ever, and I believe this will deliver the goods and we will move significantly forward from tenth, but it would be unwise to speculate how close we will get to fourth."

One battle that Moynihan also hopes to step up is on drug use, which can be a threat to any Games. “Clean athletes are the very heart of the Olympic ideal,” Moynihan said. “What we want is competitions between athletes, not between laboratories. We have to have the funding to fight doping, to be ahead of the game, to be able to detect the illicit products. Gene doping is a tremendous threat in the future.”

Cycling has on many occasions found itself at the forefront of doping controversy, but Brailsford says that he hopes a corner has been turned. “The more we test, the better it is for our sport,” he said. “It's essential for our sport, which has had some issues with doping.

“But the riders are starting to self-police themselves, starting to point the finger at people they suspect. For a sport like ours, that's quite a shift on 20 years ago. If that takes hold, it will be stronger than any anti-doping measure.”

The British presence in the Olympic Village swelled yesterday from 50 athletes to 142, some way short of half the team of 313 that will compete at the Games - an increase of 15 per cent on the number that took part in Athens.

Rain could threaten Friday's opening ceremony, but it is needed to keep the smog at bay. Elsewhere, the weather was proving agreeable, too. The threat of a typhoon engulfing the Britain holding camp in Macau - it is also a risk to the equestrianism events in Hong Kong - has dissipated and a welcome breeze has been blowing in Qingdao, where the sailing events will be held.

“It has been windy in Macau,” Clegg said. “It is expected to rise to a level three [typhoon signal] later today, but that is still well short of the level eight that would lead to closing down that facility.

“I was down at Qingdao at the beginning of the week and there was quite a lot of wind. I don't have any updates at the moment. The [sailing] team have been in Qingdao for four weeks and have gone to Shanghai for three to four days' relaxation. Wind there would obviously be helpful to our chances.”