The British Olympic team, known as Team GB, is looking to a medal haul at the Beijing Games in the countdown to the London Olympics four years later.

Veteran swimmer Mark Foster carried the British flag and she is competing in her fifth Games.

The 313-strong squad is expected to bring home 35 medals and 12 golds, with medallists expected from 17 sports out of 20 Team GB is competing, which means Britain's best medal performances at a non-boycotted Olympics since the 1920 Antwerp Games.

They also set a target of finishing eighth in the medals table in Beijing - two places higher than in Athens.

With a prospective medal success, Team GB want to show that they are on track towards the "ultimate goal" of achieving 4th in the medals tally on home soil in 2012.

The British government is investing a record amount of public money into the elite athletes, hoping to see that transferred into medal success in Beijing this summer and then in London in 2012.

In 2006, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced additional 200 million pounds public money through to 2012 - an average of 33.5 million pounds per year - to be added to the 60 million pounds a year already invested in Olympic and Paralympic success.

The government is also preparing a 100 million pounds bailout fund after the credit crunch put an end to hopes of finding the money from private business although it was admitted little progress had been made.

In 2007, and for the second straight year, financially-boosted Team GB retained seventh place in the relative Olympic medal table, notably increasing the overall medal tally to 44 (from 30 in 2006) with 13 gold medals, compared to nine the previous year.

It certainly added to their confidence to better their Athens performance in Beijing.

Britain's leading sports are cycling (expecting six medals), athletics(five), sailing (four) and rowing (four).

The Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips, who was expected to appear at the Olympic as an eventing medal favorite, had to withdraw the British equestrian team in June due to a recurring injury to her horse Toytown, while injured marathon ace Paula Radcliffe is still racing against time for a place in Beijing.

If the world record holder fails to recover, the British squad still has plenty of heroes to watch, including Ben Ainslie and Frankie Gavin.

Ainslie, Britain's most successful Olympic sailor, will endeavor to win his third successive Olympic gold, and fourth Olympic medal, and Gavin is looking to repeat his feat last year in Chicago, clinching Britain's first ever World Amateur Championships gold medal.

Controversial sprinter Dwain Chambers has been barred from competing in Beijing after the London High Court refused to lift his life doping ban by British Olympic Association.

The 30-year-old tested positive for the performance enhancing tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) in 2003.

(Xinhua News Agency August 8, 2008)