James Cracknell: Team GB squad for London 2012 Olympics is our best ever The quality of the British squad preparing for London 2012 has never been deeper and the expectations have never been higher: from the first full day of competition, when Mark Cavendish could triumph in the road race, to the last weekend when Tom Daley ends the show, hardly a day goes past without another marquee British name taking centre-stage. Rebecca Adlington, Sir Chris Hoy, Keri-Anne Payne, Jess Ennis, Bradley Wiggins, Katherine Grainger ... the list of potential champions goes on and on. The games arcade and food hall were the size of football pitches, full of the latest mind-bending, time-wasting, focus-sapping technology and Garden of Eden temptations - with equally disastrous results if the wrong choices were made. For most of us, it was like flying business class for the first time. At least the current Team GB has the ideal support structure in place to cope with all this. And once again, the reason lies in Atlanta. The failure of our squad there was a watershed moment. Governing bodies started receiving money, mostly through the Lottery, and athletes were awarded grants based on their world ranking. Over the last four years UK Sport has invested £312 million specifically to deliver success in 2012. I had seven years on the national team without funding and seven years with it. It meant during my later years we had medical, psychological and physiological support so rather than rushing off trying to earn enough to pay the rent I could focus on resting and recovering. There have been those who say the subsistence grants have made life too easy whereas previously there was a Darwin-esque natural selection process which identified the athletes who 'really wanted it. I remember in the build-up to Sydney in 2000 Steve Redgrave walked down the corridor shaking his head at the number of rooms with laptops in. But that doesn't mean the atmosphere and anticipation isn't highly-charged, nor the pressure any less intense. In 2000 I was earning £19,000 a year as an athlete who was ranked in the top four in the world, but the spotlight was still intense. I was in a boat with the only gold medallists from the previous Olympics, which increased expectations, and Tim Foster and I were also acutely aware of the need not to become the first people to make Mr Redgrave lose at an Olympics! With 19 gold medal-winners from Beijing in the squad for 2012, there are more shoulders to take that load but there's going to be a lot more weight to carry with a home Olympics. The crucial thing is for athletes to be inspired by others" performances but not to read anything into them. In Atlanta, it became almost acceptable to under-perform; in Beijing, even a silver was no longer special. The bar has been raised. It was a privilege to be in China when we won so many medals; to do that here would be something else.