After raising the team’s spirits by beating the world’s No 1 super-heavy-weight last week, David Price will be aiming to secure his place on the podium today when the medal hunt begins in earnest for Great Britain’s boxers.

Three boxers - Price, Tony Jeffries and James DeGale - have reached the quarter-finals, one win away from a guaranteed bronze, and while it is 32 years since Britain won more than a single boxing medal at an Olympic Games, there has been a sense of underachievement that the team of eight are now at less than half size.

The loss of Frankie Gavin, the world amateur lightweight champion, when he failed to make the weight was the biggest blow, but three boxers were eliminated by opponents they had beaten in the previous nine months.

The pressure has played on some. Bradley Saunders spoke of a weight lifting off his shoulders when he lost while Jeffries, who faces Imre Szello, of Hungary, at light-heavyweight tomorrow, seemed a bag of nerves in edging through his previous bout.

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Terry Edwards, the head coach, has remained keen to play down expectations. “I said before that the target was two medals, with a kind draw,” he said. “We did not get a kind draw. If you had said before that we would have had three in the quarter-finals, we would have settled for that.”

After his stunning second-round stoppage of Islam Timurziev, the Russian, on Wednesday, Price will start as the favourite against Jaroslav Jaksto today, despite the Lithuanian holding a previous win over Price. But that was during what Price refers to as his “mentally weak” days. Now he punches harder, uses his height advantage better and has filled out his frame more.

“David has to go in there relaxed and stick to his boxing, because this is going to be a totally different bout,” Edwards said. “Jaksto is a long-range boxer, but I think David has that bit of extra power.” DeGale, the middle-weight, produced a controlled display to beat Shawn Estrada, of the United States, 11-5 on Saturday and earn a quarter-final against Bakhtiyar Artayev, of Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.

Known to everyone as “Chunky”, DeGale has had a week kicking his heels after being the first Briton in any sport in action the previous Saturday. The schedule could now give him two bouts in two days if he progresses.

Given a tough draw, Khalid Yafai lost his flyweight contest to Andry Laffita, of Cuba, 9-3 on Saturday. The 19-year-old from Birmingham had defied expectations to qualify for these Games, but while he kept his boxing together well, the experienced Cuban southpaw boxed on the back foot and picked Yafai off.

“I was chasing him because he wasn’t coming forward,” Yafai said. “I’m definitely going to be around for London 2012. This time last year I wasn’t looking to Beijing, I was boxing in the European Juniors.”