Team spirit proves key to triumph on the track

"Golds," said Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, as he walked through Athens Airport yesterday. "They're a different currency from silver." They are indeed; and thanks to Kelly Holmes and the indefatigable men's sprint relay team, British athletics has three medals of the best colour from the Olympics to ensure that popular perception of its performance here will be one of memorable success.

"Golds," said Dave Moorcroft, the chief executive of UK Athletics, as he walked through Athens Airport yesterday. "They're a different currency from silver." They are indeed; and thanks to Kelly Holmes and the indefatigable men's sprint relay team, British athletics has three medals of the best colour from the Olympics to ensure that popular perception of its performance here will be one of memorable success.

Taking into account Kelly Sotherton's bronze in the heptathlon, Britain's track and field medal total here was two fewer than in Atlanta eight years ago, but the fact that no Olympic titles were secured in 1996 will always diminish the impact of that performance.

In the months approaching these Games, those in charge of the team made rational estimates of Britain's medal potential which took into account the fact that there had been a sea change since the previous Olympics.

With Colin Jackson, the double world 110m hurdles champion, and Jonathan Edwards, the Olympic triple jump champion of 2000, retired, and Ashia Hansen, a clear medal hope in the triple jump, forced out with injury, the picture was far less clearly positive.

Max Jones, the performance director of UK Athletics spoke of six medals being the benchmark for success, although he didn't specify of which hue.

Moorcroft, meanwhile, voiced the possibility that no medals might be won. The chief executive was clearly not expecting a blank Games but the fact that he could publicly countenance such a possibility indicated there were no golden probabilities in the team, save, of course, for Paula Radcliffe.

Radcliffe's traumatic failure on the road from Marathon to Athens occurred, on her own admission, through exhaustion. And by the time she returned to the track five days later for the 10,000m final she was an empty figure, driven by a desperate need to claw something, anything back from the Games to which she had devoted herself with such single-mindedness.

It will no doubt strike Radcliffe as a bitter irony that another British woman should have won double gold here while she shouldered the bulk of national expectation.

Holmes' triumph of will in taking the 800m and 1500m titles stands as one of the outstanding British performances of the modern Games. Once she had proved herself over the shorter distance, seeing off the challenge of her former training partner, Maria Mutola, whose domain it had been, belief flowered in the British runner.

Where she goes from here at 34 is open to question. She has surpassed her own imagined limits. The day after winning the 1500m, as she sat by the pool at the Politia Tennis Club with two heavy, engraved medals laid negligently on the table in front of her, Holmes' face was smoothed out with happiness.

While Holmes can, and actually might, carry out her intentions of enjoying running from now on, Radcliffe faces a searching period of accommodation to her unwelcome new status as victim. So many peerless victories had overlaid the old image of her as an endlessly courageous loser that there seemed no possibility of the reinvented Paula reverting. The events of the last nine days have grievously undone her.

Darren Campbell's future at the end of a Games where his emotions have followed a tortuous Olympic course is equally unclear.

At the age of 30 he is considering his options, although it is hard to see him retiring while aged two years younger than his mentor Linford Christie was when he won the Olympic 100m title in 1992. Mark Lewis-Francis, meanwhile, is proceeding with renewed confidence after holding off the former Olympic champion Maurice Greene in the final leg of the 100m relay to secure a gold that was all the more inspiring for the fact that so many of the British sprinters had had their preparations disrupted by injury or illness.

That the British team were able to cohere in such circumstances said much for the spirit engendered by the relay coach, Steve Perks, although they were assisted by a patent lack of togetherness within the US team.

At 21, Lewis-Francis looks a distinctly possible medallist in Beijing, as does the 400m runner Christine Ohuruogu and Kelly Sotherton, who had begun the year as only the 27th-ranked heptathlete. Sotherton's performance did not satisfy her coach, Charles van Commenee, one of the contenders to succeed James as performance director in six weeks time.

The appointment will be critical to Britain's performance in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It will be interesting to see whether UK Athletics is able to accommodate the fierce, unyielding dedication of the Dutchman.