Track: British in mood to triumph

The sight of the Union Jack flag running up the pole - something which occurred just the once at the 1996 Atlanta Games - has lifted the spirits of Britain's athletics team here as they prepare for the start of the track and field programme. Not that they need much lifting at the moment.

Max Jones, the UK Athletics performance director, said this week that the team he leads into the Games of the 27th Olympiad was ready to deliver a benchmark figure of six medals from around a dozen likely opportunities.

``This is the best-prepared team I have known since I began my connection with the national squad in 1983,'' he said yesterday. ``We've had very, very few injuries, with no major problems for the medal probables or possibles. I've got two athletes causing concern, but they are not in that category.

``Other than that, I've no bad news to tell you.'' Setting aside the nagging thought that this sounds like an enormous hostage to fortune, the prospects of a British athlete delivering what would be only the third gold since 1984 - Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell bucked the trend in 1992 - appear bright.

The principal contenders - Denise Lewis in the heptathlon, Jonathan Edwards in the triple jump (both of whom get into action on the morning of the second day of athletics) and Colin Jackson in the 110m hurdles - all managed to reach Sydney in good order after overcoming upset and injury earlier in the season.

By contrast, their principal opponents have struggled against untimely misfortunes. Eunice Barber, whose explosive sprinting and jumping saw her beat Lewis to the world title last year, has suffered an acrimonious break-up with her coach and has been troubled with sciatica and hamstring problems, although she was reported by French officials this week to be back in training, pain-free, with her old coach Claude Monot.

Allen Johnson, the reigning Olympic 110m hurdles champion, is competing knowing that the hamstring injury which forced him to pull up halfway through a race in Yokohama the weekend before last could flare again at any time. ``If it goes, it goes,'' he said phlegmatically. Both Johnson and Jackson, however, highlight Cuba's Anier Garcia as the principal danger to themselves.

Edwards, despite the faintly absurd furore which ensued upon his arrival when his unguarded comments about Britain's swimmers, and some of his fellow athletes, caused a media stir, and despite the upset of learning soon afterwards that his mother-in-law had died, is nevertheless reported to be settled into his routine.

He leads this year's world rankings with 17.62m - unremarkable for a man whose world record stands at 18.29, but a measure of the relative mediocrity of his opponents - thus far. Having lost the gold in Atlanta to the relatively unknown American Kenny Harrison, Edwards is wary of emerging forces during competition, and has spoken about the potential challenge from Cuba's former world champion Yoelvis Quesada.

He has the talent to win, however. As, in the women's version of the event, does Ashia Hansen. Britain's world indoor record holder has been jumping in training while at the British holding camp on the Gold Coast, having recovered from the foot injury which prevented her jumping for almost two months. But Hansen - who recorded 14.11m in June off a shortened run-up - has still not completed a flat-out jump since winning the IAAF grand prix final in Munich in September of last year, and the lack of competition may prove too much for a performer who has been inconsistent in major events.

Dwain Chambers, whose win over Maurice Greene in Gateshead last month offered a heady prospect of a far more significant victory here, appears more realistically to be a contender for another 100m bronze to add to the one he collected at last year's World Championships.

Greene was conspicuously unimpressed by the suggestion that, having been beaten by two Britons this season, it might happen again here.

``You think so? Good luck,'' he said. And he was firm in his own prediction of the likely result. ``I am going to win,'' he said. ``That's what I'm going to do. This is the biggest race of my life. This is the biggest stage. And the bigger the stage, the better I perform... '

But, with Jason Gardener apparently fully recovered from the back injury which hampered him at the Olympic trials, Britain's sprint quartet could offer a close enough challenge to Greene and Co to get a glimpse of gold.

The injury to Greene's training partner Inger Miller has caused her to pull out of the 100m, which makes the first part of Marion Jones's quest to win five golds here that much easier. The American faces tougher tasks in the 200m, however, where she will face Australia's darling Cathy Freeman, who will hope by then to have overcome the challenge of France's defending 400m champion, Marie-Jose Perec.

Perec has only raced twice this year, losing both times, in a 200m at Lausanne and a 400m in Nice which was won by Britain's Katharine Merry. But reports filtering back from the secret training sessions she has undergone away from her team-mates under the direction of the German coach Wolfgang Meier suggest she is moving well in training.

Her refusal to talk to the press has caused a predictable range of speculation. Some think she will win. Some think she will scratch, as she did before the semi-finals of the 1997 World Championships.

The long jump will prove another crucial point in Jones's trial. There, her awkward but fitfully effective style will be put under extreme pressure by Russia's Tatyana Kotova, who leads this year's world rankings, and Italy's former world champion Fiona May, who has questioned Jones' ability to win a championship long jump.

Paula Radcliffe's chances of improving on the 10,000m silver medal she earned in Seville last year look slim. Although Radcliffe is in good form, Gete Wami, the Ethiopian who outsprinted her at the World Championships, is among the entrants, and Sonia O'Sullivan - who outsprinted the Briton to take the 1998 world cross-country title - may well decide to take a shot at the longer distance having taken on Gabriela Szabo in what promises to be an outstanding 5,000m event.

Dean Macey, who emerged from obscurity to win a decathlon silver medal at last year's World Championships, spent longer than was comfortable recovering from the operations he required on his elbow before Christmas.

But Macey has made good progress in recent weeks, and looks a good bet as a bronze medal prospect. The abdominal injury reported to be troubling the world record holder, Tomas Dvorak of the Czech Republic, may raise the stakes even higher.

- Independent