London 2012 Olympics: watching progress of home town athletes in Olympic run-in will be fascinating

Flag wavers: attention will switch to form of British athletes over next 12 months (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)

There has been a lot of talk about the benefits of home town support as opposed to the pressures of home town expectations and over the weekend.

At various top-level Olympic events  in London there was stark evidence of both. Who’s hot and who is not? Who can handle the pressure?

Christine Ohuruogu and Phillips Idowu came crashing down – Ohuruogu so perplexed at her inability to get back into her 400m world class form that she may well decide not to go to the World Championships in Daegu and Idowu was uncharacteristically not as flash as his latest hairdo in the triple jump.

Last week in the modern pentathlon, home support was a distraction, not a help.

Yet the wildly enthusiastic crowd at Crystal Palace for the London Grand Prix was uplifting for Mo Farah – nearly everyone hung around for his last event, the 3000m, and was rewarded with a staggering turn of pace over the final 200m for victory. So too the gritty 800m runner Jenny Meadows.

Over at Hyde Park, Helen Jenkins almost had an unfair advantage such was the shouts of encouragement from those lining the triathlon Olympic test event route.

Alistair Brownlee didn’t need such crowd support such was his dominance of the event, but he took it – and a Yorkshire flag – anyway.

But his brother Johnny Brownlee spoke of the sodden spectators cheering that helped him fend off the world champion Javier Gomez to snatch third place.

Just how these athletes handle the next 12 months as the hype intensifies and the expectations of an increasingly tuned-in public rachet up is critical to how they will perform on that Olympic day.

The true champions will embrace the support and feed off it. The nervous and the uncertain will only find their fears magnified.

Young athletes with nothing to lose will be bolstered beyond their wildest expectations and often it is the athletes who are starting to climb into World Cup or World Championships finals who can benefit most from the home town Olympics.

Over the next 12 months watching the progress – or not – of these athletes is fascinating.