Black fears for 2012 athletes

Roger Black believes Great Britain will struggle to achieve their target of winning 10 athletics medals at the 2012 Olympics.

This week chief executive of UK Athletics Niels de Vos set the athletics team the ambitious target of claiming 10 medals, six more than the team won at last year's Beijing Olympics.

And Black thinks De Vos' target is too ambitious, saying: "That's a big target. It'll be quite a tough target to get. I think we'll do well to get 10 but I think if we got seven or eight we'd be doing very well compared to most Olympics."

Christine Ohuruogu, Phillips Idowu, Germaine Mason and Natasha Danvers were the only British athletes to come away from Beijing with a medal as the athletics team came up one short of the five-medal target set for them by UK Sport.

Team GB finished fifth in the overall medal table with 47 medals, which served only to further highlight the team's failings in track and field.

Black does see reason for optimism, however, because of Britain's performance in this year's World Championships in Berlin, where the team won six medals, including two gold.

"We have two World Champions in Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu. They are both very talented so they have a good chance in London," Black continued.

"You can never write Christine Ohuruogu off either and there are some young talented athletes coming through as well."