The Golden Games - Beijing 2008

This is the 8th Olympics I have attended, this time in my role of President of UK Athletics. I will be there with the British Athletics team, about 60 athletes all together, with managers, coaches, doctors and physios.

Our athletes have been selected from our Olympic trials in Birmingham. The criteria is pretty straight forward. First achieve the qualifying standard in your event during the season, then finish in the first two at the finals in a head to head competition. We can take 3 athletes per event and this will be at the discretion of the selectors. It’s a fair and objective system.

Our athletes are well prepared, thanks mainly to lottery funding. It’s called ‘The World Class Programme’ and enables our top performers to train full time at home or abroad in excellent facilities and with their personal coaches present. They also get medical and physiotherapy provided and lots of advice on nutrition, lifestyle management and psychology. It’s really a scientific approach to sport helping to make our athletes competitive with the rest of the world.

Beijing is hot and humid with lots of smog, difficult conditions to run it, especially in the middle and long distance events like the marathon. To help acclimatise to this the team spent two weeks in Macau, an island south of Hong Kong, also very hot and humid before they travelled to Beijing to compete. They did this before the World Championships in Osaka, Japan last year and we came back with five medals!!!

So what are our prospects. In Athens four years ago we won three gold. Kelly Holmes got two in her great 800 and 1500 metre wins and our men’s 4 x 100metre relay beat the Americans to take gold.
To be honest, I would be pleased if we achieved the same in Beijing. Every four years it is getting tougher and with 210 countries taking part gold medals will be a huge challenge. We have set a target of five medals and fifteen finalists. Our best medal chances are in the men’s triple jump with Philip Idowu, the woman’s 400 metres with Christine Ohurugo and Nicola Saunders, the heptathlon with Kelly Setherton and our men’s 4 x 100 metre relay.

Medals are important because success inspires our young people to emulate our champions and of course to show our sponsors that we are world class. But it is not just about medals. Our athletes have worked very hard to be selected to represent Great Britain at the Olympics, this in itself is an achievement. We should also congratulate those who make finals and be in the top eight in the world, then there will be those who achieve a personal best performance in their event. We can ask no more of an athlete if they manage this at the Olympics.

So I am looking forward to a great sporting occasion in Beijing. Hopefully it will be a peaceful games devoid of politics.

Good luck to our sportsmen and woman in all the Olympic sports involved – 28 in all, let’s hope they do come home with the 35 medals predicted and then it’s London 2012 – here we come!!!

Lynn Davies