The Olympics have not been to London since 1948 and excitement has already been building for some time. The British team had considerable success in Beijing in 2008, coming fourth overall and taking 47 medals, 19 of them gold.
For the London 2012 athletes, just beating that total will be tough and pressure on the British athletes will be phenomenal. There are no sure fire champions of course, but which of the British medal hopes are serious contenders for gold?
Sir Chris Hoy, Golden Boy
Much rests on the Scottish Knight, the cycling powerhouse, the man who already has four Olympic golds to his name, three of them coming in Beijing in a truly phenomenal performance in 2008.
This man is a machine with thighs the size of torpedoes. If ever a nation wanted to place their hopes in the lap of one person, it would be Hoy, not least because his lap is so enormous. There's not the space to list all his achievements, but even apart from the Olympics he's a 10-time World Champion, a double Commonwealth Champion and has 30 World Cup golds to his name.
Surely, one of the greatest sportsmen Scotland or Britain has ever produced and his crowning achievement should hopefully come in London in front of what will be a raucous, partisan crowd in the velodrome.
Jessica Ennis, Olympic Medal Hopeful
The London Olympics could hardly arrive at a better time for this outstanding athlete. Jessica will be 26 when she bids to emulate Denise Lewis, who claimed a memorable heptathlon gold for Britain at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
The signs are looking extremely good as Jessica has been striking more gold recently than a champion 1890s prospector.
In 2009 she claimed gold in the heptathlon at the World Championships in Berlin; in 2010 she broke the British and Championship record with gold in the pentathlon at the World Indoor Championships in Doha; and in the summer of 2010 she made it a treble with gold at the European Championships in Barcelona in the heptathlon. She is set to be one of the faces of the Olympics and you can follow her progress on Twitter.
Ben Ainslie, London 2012 Gold Dream
Britain's most successful Olympic sailor ever, Ben is close to becoming some kind of Steve Redgrave of sailing. He'll be just 35 when his fourth Olympics roll by and has every chance of adding to his hugely impressive collection.
It all started in 1996 in the Atlanta Games, where he took silver, before going one better in Sydney in 2000. He then moved from Laser to Finn Class, which meant a gruelling training programme to put on extra weight. Nevertheless, he became World Champion, defended it successfully and took a second gold in Athens in 2004. Finally, in 2008, and despite a bout of mumps, he took an incredible third gold in Beijing.
Ben is currently focused on the America's Cup as skipper of Team Origin, but there can be little doubt that he'll be desperate to add a fourth gold to his collection in 2012.
Phillips Idowu, Time For Gold
Britain's premier triple jumper knows that when the Olympics reach London he will be 33 and the Games mark probably his final chance to take that coveted gold medal.
In Beijing, Phillips agonisingly lost out on gold by just five centimetres to Nelson Evora. But in 2009 he took gold at the World Championships in Berlin and in the summer of 2010 he jumped a personal best of 17.81 metres to win gold at the European Championships.
Interestingly, Phillips will be just slightly younger than Jonathan Edwards was when he won a triple jump gold for Britain in Sydney in 2000. And, as an omen, Edwards also triumphed in the European Championships two years earlier. East London is where Phillips grew up. What a fitting place it would be to reach the very top of the mountain.
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Daniel Trelfer - I'm a freelance writer and also work in television on and off. I'm looking forward to exploring a range of my interests at Suite 101, ...
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