With a record 47 Olympic medals, Britain can now go back home heads high with every reason to expect more in the London Games.
The British Olympic team, known as Team GB, had set a pre-Games target of 41 medals en route to the "ultimate goal" of ranking fourth in the medal table in 2012, when they play hosts to the Games.
But they did even better. The 313-strong squad, competing in 20 sports, pocketed 19 golds, 13 silvers and 15 bronzes -- Britain's best medal performance at any Olympics since 1908.
Achieving fourth in the overall medal standings -- four places better than in Athens, they have reached the "ultimate goal" four years in advance. They could have finished third, ranked by gold, but Russia's late surge shoved them down one place.
Inspired by the best Olympic performance in nearly 100 years, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed on Friday that the government would leave "no stone unturned" in its commitment to ensuring that the medal success at Beijing was exceeded in London.
"Our challenge now is to turn what has been two weeks of great sporting success into 10 years of sporting triumph for our country," he said, "We've got to prove that success is not just a one-off. We've got to extend our domination in sports."
Brown met Chris Hoy, the cyclist who has won three gold medals, and some of the other successful British Olympians, praising them for bringing "the exhilaration and sense of achievement right across the country".
A Downing Street summit will be held later in the year between the sporting bodies and Olympic authorities to "learn the lessons" of Beijing, and how best to promote elite-level sport.
As expected, Britons are doing well on sitting-down sports including cycling (eight golds), sailing (four) and rowing (two).
Hoy becomes the "sweetheart" of Britain with his three titles on men's sprint, Keirin and team sprint together with his teammates while Rebecca Adlington is also good, clinching two golds on women's 400 and 800 meters freestyles.
Canoers emulated British "sitting down" success when Tim Brabants powered his way down the flat water of the Shunyi lake, becoming Britain's first ever Olympic gold medallist in the sport.
Hopefully the Britons' next step is to stand up. They have made improvements as world champion Christine Ohuruogu won women's 400-meters and boxer James Degale added a gold in men's 75kg.
The leap forward in Beijing is realized by a better-financed, better-prepared Team GB than ever.
According to British media reports, elite sports received a total of ￡265 million in the run-up to Beijing, compared with ￡5 million ahead of the Atlanta Games, when the entire British team won just one gold medal, ￡63 million before Sydney and ￡84 million for Athens.
The sum is expected to increase considerably in the London cycle.
Some 600 million pounds has been earmarked for Britain's Olympians for 2012 -- half from the lottery, 221 million from the government and 79 million from private sponsors.
Not a single penny from the latter source has yet been found, forcing the government this week to launch its Medal Hopes drive to appeal to sponsors, but the Olympic success is expected to give companies new incentives to support certain sports or even individual competitors.
At present, sponsorship money goes into a pool for the entire GB team. Ahead of 2012, the government plans to allow firms to provide funding in a more direct way, allowing them to build a relationship with future Olympians by sponsoring sportspeople living in a particular locality, as well as individual teams or competitors.
(Xinhua News Agency August 24, 2008)