Graphic: Best of British

Britain’s Olympic heroes return home today to discover if the past 17 days have been a life-changing experience or a glorious, but brief, interlude from gym work. “I plan to go to as much as I can,” Chris Hoy said of the whirl of civic receptions and bus-top parades, “because I know that in a month the phone will stop ringing.”

As he sat in the British Olympic Association’s Beijing headquarters yesterday, three gold medals clanking around his neck, the cyclist may have been overly modest, but the point was worth making. “We’re not in this game for the fame and fortune,” he said. The revelation yesterday that our medal-winners may be entitled in future to cash bonuses, perhaps £20,000 per gold, had come as a pleasant surprise to Hoy and his teammates, but there was no stampede, no demands for the money to be back-dated.

The Scot said that he was far more intent on using his newfound celebrity in pursuit of the relatively modest ambition of racing on Top Gear. “I’d love to do that lap against the clock,” he said. “It’s the best show on TV.” Rebecca Adlington, double gold medal-winner in the swimming pool, has not exactly had her life turned upside down unless you count an invite from Ready Steady Cook! and countless offers of Jimmy Choo shoes.

Back to reality for golden generation

Olympic heroes will discover if the last 17 days has been a life-changing experience or a glorious but brief interlude

• Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold

• Hard work starts now as British sailors look towards London 2012

• Public support gained from success in Beijing needs to last four years

BACKGROUND

• How the Brits became world beaters

• London double-decker arrives in Beijing

• Olympics proves capacity for greatness

• New dawn for British sport as Olympic sun sets

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

Times Archive: Olympic closing ceremonies: how they used to do them

From Berlin, 1936, to Los Angeles, 1984, we've dug into The Times Archive to revisit some of the high points and the hubris

Related Links

• Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold

• Hard work starts now for British sailors

• Public support must last four years

Victoria Pendleton is still on a high from a previous trip to Wimbledon when she was invited into the royal box. “They announced my name and everything,” the cyclist said, with wonderment. What perks does she hope a gold medal will bring? “Oooh, a nice frock for a photo-shoot. And I don’t mind some air-brushing.”

The Olympics are a talent show for the boys and girls next door; for extraordinary achievers with everyday charm. That is not a cheap shot against our footballers, tempting as that is. Give our rowers £120,000 a week, a ten-page spread in Hello! and more groupies than they know what to do with and perhaps they would forget whether they were in it for the sport or for the cash.

But who cannot fail to be impressed by the dedication of a man such as Dr Tim Brabants, perhaps the last of the amateurs? After canoeing to gold and bronze medals, he returns to England today seeking unpaid work in an NHS casualty department. “I need to retrain and the only way I will get that work is by offering to do it unpaid,” he said. That is dysfunctional Great Britain for you and the first comedown for our Olympic champions will hit them today when they drive out of Heathrow and straight into Bank Holiday traffic. No Olympic lanes, no buses to set your watch by, as in Beijing.

Nor does the banning of a reception party at Heathrow on “health and safety grounds” give confidence that this is a country equipped to host the biggest show on earth, but this is not a time for cynicism.

Our 27 gold medal-winners return aware of the massive interest they have stirred but incapable of knowing what an impact it will have on their lives. There is a danger of anticlimax, according to Ben Ainslie.

“After Atlanta in 1996, I came back and had nothing,” the sailor said. “There was just a void, so now I make sure there is always something specific to look forward to.” In his case, that is a low-key race next month in Sardinia. “You have to look at bite-sized chunks. You can’t just expect to sustain your drive for four years until the next Olympics.”

A familiar grind of training awaits for many of the athletes but, for their sports, the gains from Team GB’s medal haul are already being measured. Dave Brailsford, cycling’s performance director, revealed yesterday that tickets for a World Cup event at the Manchester velodrome in late October had sold at the sort of rate you would normally expect for a George Michael concert. It is just one of the many trickle-down benefits, although it remains to be seen whether a surge in interest can be sustained.

“More than anything, I hope that my success helps canoeing to grow in Britain,” Brabants said. “If people see a British gold medallist, it makes them believe that anyone can do it. Success should filter down the whole sport, especially with lottery funding.”

The UK Sport World Class Performance Programme invested £13,622,000 in canoeing in the four years up to Beijing, which will strike anyone as an awful lot of money to spend on one minority sport. But at least it was a sport that hit its medal target.

To fall only slightly short is to see tough questions asked, which was why Dave Collins, performance director for UK Athletics, yesterday found himself having to explain, football manager-style, why he should keep his job. No one disputes that improvements have been made under his leadership but potential has not been turned into medals. Boxing also faces a funding row, with the Amateur Boxing Association wanting the cash without the accountability.

How the money is spent should interest you - it is yours, after all - but there will be no public demands for refunds after the success of Team GB. And, for now at least, “the Olympo-sceptics” who object to the billions being spent on London 2012 are struggling to be heard above the applause for our winners, a point that Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, could not wait to make in China. The perks should also filter through to the athletes, although it is an inexact science. “If there are perks going, there are a lot of us wanting them,” Pendleton said. Fame can depend less on athletic prowess than looks and charisma.

There will be invitations to Blue Peter and opportunities to turn on the Christmas lights for those who want a slice of the limelight. Gongs have already been promised by the Prime Minister. And with the lottery funding and London 2012 to come, the truth is that there has never been a better time to be a British Olympian. Many are full-time and the best among them can earn £50,000 a year, split between a UK Sport grant and sponsorship.

“I don’t earn what the footballers do, which is a bit of a shame, but then I don’t have a camera shoved up my nose every time I go out of the door,” Brabants said. As he prepared to return home with a gold medal dangling around his neck, he seemed pretty happy with that deal.

- Gordon Brown confirmed last night that Sir Alex Ferguson has been approached to manage a Great Britain men’s football team at the London Olympics. The Prime Minister, who is determined to see a Britain team in the men’s and women’s tournaments in 2012, said that Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, had spoken to Ferguson about the role. “We will see who wants to be part of this and then we will get a manager that everybody will be happy with,” Brown said.