(REUTERS) – British athletes have succumbed to a rush of blood to the head rather than gold fever at the world championships, and as time ticks down to the London Games in 2012 British hopes of Olympic medals will flatline without significant improvement.
False starts and big flops have been the story so far in Daegu, with defending heptathlon world champion Jessica Ennis and 10 000 metres favourite Mo Farah letting gold slip through their fingers. Olympic 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu was disqualified for a false start, world 1500m silver medallist Lisa Dobriskey failed to get through the heats and pole vaulter Holly Bleasdale, ranked ninth in the world, failed to record a height.
Dwain Chambers would have gleefully accepted the offer of matching world record holder Usain Bolt’s performance in Daegu. The veteran sprinter did as much but not in the way he envisaged — leaving the track with his head in his hands after false-starting in the 100m.
A target of five to eight medals had been set before the worlds in South Korea, and while Britain will probably achieve that mediocre mark, few, if any, will be gold.
Steve Cram, Britain’s former 1500 world record holder and 1983 world champion, said the team’s performance had been “slightly disappointing”.
“We’ve had a couple of false starts, Holly Bleasdale no-heighting, so it’s been a bit up and down. A bit below par from what was expected,” he told Reuters in the bowels of Daegu’s cavernous stadium.
“Hopefully we can still win a handful of medals here and they will be of a different colour next year.”

ONUS ON ATHLETES
While UK Athletics chief Charles van Commenee conceded just a month ago the team were underdone and would need every minute of the next 11 months to get ready for London, Cram said there was very little the federation could do at this late stage.
“It’s up to the athletes. We make too much of systems, this is individual athletes trying to improve themselves the best they can. The more help they get from the federation great, but 11 months out there’s not a lot it can do.”
Sheffield-born Ennis gifted her world heptathlon title to Tatyana Chernova with a feeble javelin throw that dropped 13 metres behind the Russian’s, while Farah blew his chance to become Britain’s first 10 000m world champion.
Somali-born Farah had been touted as the man to shatter Kenenisa Bekele’s aura of invincibility in the event and when the Ethiopian, never beaten on the track over the distance, limped out of the race the title was there for the taking.
Farah, however, shot himself in the foot.
Despite possessing one of the fastest finishing kicks, Farah exhausted the fire in his legs by striking for home way before the bell. He was hunted down and passed by the unheralded Ibrahim Jeilan. Clearly he had been focusing on one Ethiopian and had not done his homework on the others.
“I didn’t have a clue about the guy and didn’t know what he was capable of,” Farah said ruefully.

LED TO THE LIONS
London 2012 organising committee chairman, and one of the all-time great middle-distance runners, Sebastian Coe, accentuated the positives of the British performances.
Farah’s silver medal marked progress, while Andy Turner’s bronze in the high hurdles, albeit after Dayron Robles’s disqualification shunted him up the order, was cause for optimism, he said.
“There’s a feeling that this is a team on the move,” he told reporters. “Teams are not as fragile as outside observers think they are. If you think where we were four years ago in Osaka, this is a very different atmosphere.
“For a few years, some of them looked like they were being led to the lions and not in an arena celebrating the best athletes in the world.”
Britain now looks to Dai Green (400 hurdles) and Phillips Idowu (triple jump) to resuscitate their gold medal hopes in South Korea and breathe new life into the team before the Olympics.