大象传媒

Fifty-three days to go until the Olympic triathlon - and down in Hyde Park, at the , it couldn't be less like Beijing.

Quacking ducks paddle across the muddy Serpentine. Old ladies in M&S coats hug cups of tea. A chill wind sends grey clouds bumping into each other overhead.

You rather feel for the athletes, just off the plane from a 10-day heat camp in Texas which was designed to get them used to the conditions they'll face in China.

"It averaged 41 degrees C out there," says former world under-23 champion and part-time 大象传媒 blogger, goose-bumps appearing on his arms.

The three men and two women who make up the British squad might not be as hyped as the GB cyclists, as recognisable as the athletes or as historically successful as the rowers or sailors, but they go to Beijing with the scent of success in their nostrils.

As Simon Clegg, Team GB's chef de mission, says, "This is a quite outstanding group of individuals."

Between them, Tim Don, Will Clarke, Alistair Brownlee, Helen Tucker and Hollie Avil have , three junior world titles and two under-23 world titles.

It's the first truly British tri team. At the last two Olympics, you were more likely to hear a South African or Canadian accent from someone wearing a GB vest, but this time around all five athletes are born and bred - from Bridgend, Cambridge, Leeds, Northampton and London.

It's also the best drilled, best prepared triathlon squad GB has ever sent to a major championship. Concerned about the effect the Beijing temperatures might have on the athletes, performance director Heather Williams even fed her charges Bondesque-sounding "core temperature pills" to see how their bodies reacted to the Texan heat.

It all sounds wonderful - the culmination of serious investment and hard work in British triathlon since the sport made its Olympic debut eight years ago in Sydney.

There's only one slight problem: Britain has yet to win a single Olympic medal of any description in triathlon.

This team might be young - the average age is 22 - and as fresh-faced as novice nuns (Hollie Avil only completed her A-Levels three weeks ago) but there's pressure on those youthful shoulders. And despite all the positive signs, there's no guarantee of anything this time around either.

Compared to say, the 200m freestyle, or the 400m on the track, triathlon is a notoriously hard sport to predict. You've got 50 athletes fighting it out after a mass-start on the swim, breakaways fizzing off the front on the bike, packs forming to give chase or slow down pursuers and a 10km run where a decent runner can seemingly come from nowhere to take gold, as Austria's did in Athens.

As Williams says, "There are so many uncontrollables. You just have to try to organise the chaos."

Clarke, who finished last September, is worrying only about his last eight weeks of training.

"My nerves and tactics will depend on this final block," he says. "If I'm riding like a monster, I'll be looking to get away on the bike, but it's more likely that I'll play it safe and get to the run and attack from there.

"If you attack on the bike and get a minute and a half, you're the gold medallist - but a lot of the time it doesn't work, and you'll finish 20th.

For Avil, who has only ever raced over the Olympic distance of 1500m swim, 40km bike and 10km run three times in her life, the temptation must be to treat Beijing as a bonus. In four years time, after all, they're staging the Olympics triathlon in Hyde Park itself.

Instead, the 18-year-old who only picked up triathlon in 2005 is as focused on the podium as four-time national champion Tim Don.

"I'm serious about the race," says Avil. "I want people to forget about my age - I'd like to get out there and mix things up."