It isn't just his occupation: England fly-half, he is almost certain to start in that most scrutinised and pivotal position in the forthcoming autumn internationals. It's his genealogy: both grandfathers noted film and television actors, maternal grandmother the same.

It's even spelled out on his passport. Flood's middle names are Gerald - after the paternal grandfather who starred in Dr Who, Steptoe and Son, and Patton - and Albert Lieven, his mother's father, who played the villainous Flashman's father in 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and a whole range of Nazis in a number of war-time pot-boilers.

It's as if he were born for the spotlight. Except, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Flood is the most experienced player in the England squad with 50 caps. Picture: Getty

"I've always disliked it," he says. "I've always hated the idea of having to go there and do things and always be on show.

"You're sometimes jealous of the guys like Chris Robshaw who can just go out there and keep their head down, work incredibly hard and come out knowing they've ticked all the boxes. You are sometimes jealous of that, because you shoulder so much responsibility."

By accident or design, Flood's performances over the next month of Saturdays will play a huge part in determining whether England's story has a happier ending than it often does at this time of year.

Forget winters of discontent. Autumn, for a generation of England stars, has been a season of misses and mellow fruitlessness.

In the nine years since the World Cup win of 2003, they have recorded only four wins at home over the old Tri-Nations teams. All three of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand will be striding onto the Twickenham stage again this month, with Fiji to open up this Saturday. The plot is due a change.

"This is [the equivalent of] coming into the quarter-finals of a World Cup and going all the way through to the final. You have to beat these sides. This has to be us setting down a mark," he insisted.

"Twickenham used to be a fortress - not many teams came here and won. That's shifted.

"You understand the difficulty of it, but you want a space that is ours, where it is very, very difficult for anyone to come here and beat us.

Those autumn struggles - and occasional rare triumphs - have defined Flood's own career. He made his international debut as a coltish 21-year-old in dismal defeat by Argentina six years ago. His finest display for his country, when he landed a record-breaking 25 points against Australia, came during the Wallabies' last visit to Twickenham two years ago.

Remarkably, at 27 years old, he is now the squad's most experienced player, his 50 caps setting him apart in coach Stuart Lancaster's young regime.

He is not necessarily the most settled. Flood has seldom been allowed to feel comfortable in the number 10 jersey. Of those 50 caps only 32 have been starts, the varied threats of injury, form and rivals meaning he has hokey-cokeyed with the best of them.

"It can be tough," he admits, thinking back to the period before the last World Cup when a 12-match run was ended by the sudden recall of his old mentor Jonny Wilkinson. "We had had success as a side - we went all the way to a Grand Slam game. It was the first time we had finished top of the Six Nations for years. It can be frustrating to deal with.

"The settled thing is an interesting point. Stu has made it an important point that no-one ever feels settled. Gone are the days two weeks out saying 'You're in the squad, this is how it's going to be, this is the line-up'.

"There's none of that now. Chris [Robshaw] doesn't find out that he's captain until the week before the first match. Stu has always made it as competitive, and as fearful for your place, as he can. There is that edge in training."

Is that always a good thing? Isn't a player worried about his place less likely to take risks, more likely to play safety-first rugby?

Flood nods. "That's the balance of what he's doing. He's making you fear for your spot, but when you pull the shirt on he wants you to go out there and play without fear. It's a clever balance."

Wilkinson might have departed for the warm sunshine and welcome of southern France, but the pretenders to his throne keep on queuing. Charlie Hodgson and Owen Farrell shared fly-half duties with success during the Six Nations; George Ford is pushing Flood hard at his club Leicester, while Gloucester's tyro Freddie Burns will train with England this week, to the delight of many in the west and beyond.

Does Flood find himself watching those rivals intently, whether in camp with England or on television highlights?

"No. I've never done that, not with Jonny or Charlie or anything. 'How many had he kicked? What's his passing been like?' Never.

"I'll do it for opposition 10s, so I know what I can attack on the pitch. But I don't ever want to do that with team-mates. You get in the horrible mind-set of chasing them. You have to manage your expectations of where you want to go - like Sean Fitzpatrick said, 'be the best you can be'."

Can that competition not act as a perfect sporting stimulus?

"I never want it to become a game of poker. I never want to see his hand and then reveal mine. The stimulus of competition is more through the training. We had a talk from Will Greenwood, and in the team's buddy-system, he was paired up with Mike Catt even when they were vying for the same spot, and it worked for them," explained Flood.

"It is hard, because it's relentless. But you have to accept it's natural. The closer you become to somebody, the more you want to be better than them. That's the beauty of it.

"Having an appreciation of how they're playing is a big difference to worrying about it. Understand it's your game that you control. I can't manage how Fordy's going to play."

Flood has now played through four different England regimes in his six years - Andy Robinson's, Brian Ashton's, Martin Johnson's and now Lancaster's, if we ignore Rob Andrew's two-match interregnum.

Does it make him, if not more cynical, a little more cautious about the brave new world that Lancaster is explicitly trying to create?

"I'm always cynical. No, I think you're less... you become a bit more single-minded. You have a way you want to prepare for a game, so when a new guy comes in you hold that close to your chest for the first couple of weeks.

"You study what they're trying to do, and over time your respect is created by how the team plays. Having been rolled through four managers does make you conscious of, how long is this guy going to be here, do we adhere to everything he wants? Because you never know.

"I've always tried to be as selfless as possible. If the team scores four or five tries and I'm not in any of them, then fantastic. When you're in the team environment in my position, you're trying to make everyone else look as fantastic as possible.

"The selfishness for me comes in when, like today, you train as a team and then I stay out and want to kick and go into my own space, my own environment. I work on my own little bits.

"That's my selfish part. I've got kicking to do, I've got Achilles extensions to do, I've got movement to do. That's when I can detach myself from the squad."

Of the 10 autumn internationals Flood has played, he has won just three. Only one of those victories, the thumping of Australia, came against a top-level side. It is not a statistic he will worry about as he walks out at Twickenham this Saturday.

"What you do as a player is say, this is my level. I sit there. I don't get up when I play well, I don't get down when I play badly.

"You're flat-lining. If you become too emotionally attached to what some people are saying, it just destroys you. It can tear you apart. So one thing I've learned is to take yourself away from it. Totally be honest with yourself and your peers and see how that drives you forward."

Albert Lieven once starred in a film called 'Loser Takes All'. Fifty six years later his grandson may prefer to dip into his grandmother's canon instead over the next four weekends. 'London Belongs To Me'? That would do rather nicely.

These sort of Parisian valedictions are not supposed to feature the British in any other than a supporting role. That a scrawny ginger kid from Kilburn has grown up to win his sport's greatest prize is one of the more remarkable tales British sport has produced.

It might even be the most laudable of all. "I may be a bit biased," admitted Sir Chris Hoy earlier this week, "because Bradley is an old team-mate and a great guy. But if he gets to that finish line it will be as good as anything any British athlete has ever done."

These are mighty claims, and lead to the sort of arguments that slander legends and end friendships. Yet the context, manner and meaning of Wiggins's golden July give Hoy's words a resonance that is hard to ignore.

Wiggins has worn the leader's yellow jersey for 60 per cent of this year's Tour. Photo: Getty

There are the numbers - 109 years and 99 races gone, and just two fourth places for Britain to celebrate before this weekend; the stats (no Olympic track gold medallist has ever gone on to win Le Tour); and the plain old impossibles: a bloke who resides in Eccleston reigning in Paris; a champion of the track at ease in the mountains, a chaotic war of a race made to look like a procession.

Back in July 2007, when British Cycling's performance director Dave Brailsford first mentioned his dream of a British Tour team, it seemed exactly that: a happy fantasy, a vision at odds with history.

British teams had rarely been more than footnotes to the Grande Boucle, from the day in 1937 when Charlie Holland's broken pump ended his country's debut attempt, to the failure of eight of the ten-strong Hercules team, the UK's first, to complete the loop in 1955, to the dismal collapse of the ANC Halfords team in 1987.

As the Beijing Olympics a year later illustrated, Brailsford could make a mockery of precedent. But when he launched Team Sky on 4 January 2010 with the promise of a British Tour winner in five years, not even he expected a British one-two within three.

Some sporting triumphs owe a large debt to luck - a one-off punch, a penalty shoot-out, a one-eyed official. Wiggins's victory has its roots in nothing more complicated than ceaseless hard work, pinpoint planning and an unwavering commitment to become as good as he could possibly be.

After finishing Sky's debut Tour down in 23rd place, he sat down with coach Shane Sutton and sport scientist Tim Kerrison and worked out how to transform himself into a true Tour contender. In Tenerife's Mount Teide national park, 7,000ft above sea level, the hard yards were climbed, far from family, far from home.

The route of the 2012 Tour certainly suited Wiggins - 100km of time-trialling was always going to play to his strengths. The increasing success of cycling's battles against doping also left him facing a field as fair as any in an age.

But these are not caveats.

Wiggins has been the dominant stage racer of the entire year. During his hat-trick of victories at Paris-Nice, Tour of Romandie and Critérium du Dauphiné he wore the leader's jersey for 15 of the 21 racing days. In France he rode in yellow for 2,064km of the 3,497km route. And if his time-trialling has been pivotal, wasn't it also for former winners Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain?

If Wiggins owes much to a very un-British level of planning and resource, he also owes a lot to Sky's overseas operators - Christian Knees of Germany, Bernhard Eisel of Austria, Richie Porte and Michael Rogers of Australia and Norway's Edvald Boasson Hagen - as well as the unstinting support of his compatriots Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish.

In that he is in shared company with every other Tour winner. What makes his win all the more admirable is the style he has done it in - untroubled on the roads almost throughout, and able to deal with the unique pressures and questions which come the way of a maillot jaune.

Race leaders aren't expected to lead out their sprinters in the final week, let alone do it three times. Neither would all his predecessors have ordered the peloton to wait for the reigning champion, as he did for Cadel Evans, when saboteurs threw tacks on the road to derail the onrushing express train.

For these deeds the French media have dubbed him 'Le Gentleman'; L'Equipe has even hailed "the most famous rouflaquettes (sideburns) since Elvis Presley".

Back in Britain, the impact has been even greater.

Wiggins has not just dominated the back pages of newspapers but, increasingly, the front. This Tour win has secured him alongside Steve Redgrave, Daley Thompson, Chris Hoy, Ian Botham and Bobby Moore in the public sporting consciousness.

His successes should be hard to understand; none of us will ever ride the Tour. But millions of us cycle, when we don't row, or pole vault and throw discus, or run 1500m. We could never dream of cycling as he does, but that's exactly the point: we're aware of the gap, and we're in awe at how vast it is.

It is also an achievement rooted in uniquely British circumstances.

Although born in Ghent to an Australian father, Wiggins is a product of a homegrown cycling culture that long pre-dates Lance-inspired sportives and City-boy bikers: studying Cycling Weekly as a schoolboy, learning his trade at the dilapidated Herne Hill velodrome, making his time-trial debut on the Hayes bypass.

Is this the greatest British sporting achievement ever? The comparisons are near impossible, not least because the Tour and its demands are unlike any other sporting event. That's why we love it.

If you want to try, then you could throw in Roger Bannister's four-minute mile, Redgrave's five consecutive golds, maybe even the most sacred of all, to part of the nation at least: Wembley, 1966.

If that sounds too much, listen to 81-year-old Brian Robinson, Britain's first ever winner of a Tour stage, as he set off for Paris to witness Wiggins's coronation.

"We never dreamed of this in my days," he said. "We were scrubbing along at the back of the bunch."

British riders scrub along no more. The man known to the French as Le Gentleman, and the Dutch as 'The Banana With The Sideburns' has climbed the pinnacle.

Murray's brave defeat in the first Wimbledon singles final to feature a British male in 74 years - his fourth painful loss in four Grand Slam finals - came down not to fate or bad luck nor any stage-fright on his behalf.

Federer's win in four sets was instead founded on that most simple logic: the best player playing the better tennis for longer will always ultimately prevail.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

Considered a spent force by some when he crashed out of the last two championships here in the quarter-finals, Federer's seventh Wimbledon crown - and 17th Grand Slam title overall - was won by a combination of conjuror's flair and brilliant, brutal hitting that very few players in the history of the game could match.

Murray, having had four break points for a two-set lead and a shot at sporting immortality, will be haunted by this one for a while. He has never been this close to an elusive major, never played so well early on in a match of this magnitude.

At the end he was bereft, reduced to tears by the realisation that it had all once again slipped away. But while it will be of little comfort to him now, in that moment another rather different battle might finally have been won.

Murray has never completely been taken to heart by the entire British sporting public. All fortnight we heard complaints that he was too taciturn, too muted on court, too short of the charisma and grace that have made Federer the most popular player of his generation.

There are some very simple answers to that: it is none of our business how much of himself he wants the world to see, or how often he smiles when that world is watching.

He is a professional tennis player, aiming simply to win as many matches and majors as he can, and doing a rather better job of it than any other Briton has in recent memory or will do for an age.

When the tears came, however, and the post-match words choked in his throat with half the country watching or listening at home, the young man was at last visible behind the sportsman's tough exterior.

Here he was, revealed in a way few expected: emotional, apologetic, engaging and open for all to see.

It is not the first time Murray has shed tears on court. His five-set defeat to Novak Djokovic at this year's Australian Open ended the same way.

The difference this time was the reaction from the crowd inside Centre Court - sustained applause, collectively placing an empathetic arm around the shoulder - and from those watching at home who had previously never thawed to the Scot's angular charms.

"I never thought the old boy had it in him," as one chastened spectator said wonderingly courtside.

Murray's old coach and friend Miles Maclagan was there as part of BBC 5 live's commentary team. "Andy has almost resisted being liked," he said afterwards. "He has wanted to be liked for winning titles, not for who he is."

After this Wimbledon it may no longer be an either/or, just as Federer is so widely loved for both his unmatched deeds on the court and the way he has done it all.

Early in Sunday's final the wonderfully optimistic thoughts that had sprung from the semi-final defeat of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga seemed gloriously close to becoming reality.

Murray broke Federer in his very first service game and went on to take the set as the old master showed uncharacteristic nerves, shipping 16 unforced errors to his apprentice's five. When Murray had two break points at 4-4 in the second a nation puffed out its cheeks and started to wonder.

But Federer, victorious here in six of his seven previous final appearances, does not wilt so easily. He broke Murray from nowhere to steal away the second set 7-5 and then, with the Briton's first serve dipping below 50% in the critical third, purred through the gears to reach a level that few other players in history have ever touched.

By the end he had hit 62 winners, more than any other player had managed in any other match at this Wimbledon.

For Federer, three long years on from his last SW19 title, this victory was more than just another sparkling campaign medal to pin alongside all the others.

A month short of his 31st birthday he was supposed to be in his tennis dotage, a much-loved figure who could no longer quite cut it in a thrusting world of dashing young blades like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.

Men don't win Wimbledon singles titles in their 30s. Only Rod Laver and Arthur Ashe have ever managed to do so, and then only once apiece.

Instead, Federer has not only drawn level with Pete Sampras and William Renshaw on the all-time Wimbledon men's singles champions list, but will next week go back to number one in the ATP world rankings.

Dotage? By mid-July Federer will have held top-billing for longer in total than any other player in history. Even for this extraordinary player, it is an extraordinary achievement.

We know Ivan Lendl well enough by now not to expect him to have high-fived his way down the Royal Box. So deadpan is Murray's coach that even his portrait in the tennis Hall of Fame has smiled more recently.

But the message the old warrior was sending out to his young charge was clear: why the big party?

To a nation on starvation rations since Bunny Austin became the last British male in a Wimbledon singles final 74 years ago, Murray's achievement in fighting through to a showdown on Sunday with Roger Federer was something to be simultaneously delighted and disbelieving about.

Andy Murray (centre) warms up alongside coaching staff Dani Vallverdu and Ivan Lendl (right) ahead of his Wimbledon men's final match against Roger Federer on Sunday. Photo: Getty  

Lendl, a man who lost his first four Grand Slam finals and was two sets down in his fifth before coming back to win a remarkable eight, has the perfect perspective to tell Murray different.

Making finals is one thing. Making them count is quite another.

Austin's fate is a pertinent if sepia-toned case study. Having won his semi-final back in 1938 he was then horribly mangled by Don Budge in the championship match, winning just four games in his straight-sets defeat.

Murray, Lendl might well tell him, must be as resolute and single-minded as he himself was in finally winning that French Open final of 1984 rather than a Bunny in the headlights.

Lendl, of course, only had to contend with the weight of his own fearsome expectations. On Sunday Murray will have most of a nation glued to his exploits - in living rooms from Peterhead to Penzance, on radios in cars and kitchens and through smartphones wherever they can be waved.

For once this summer there will be no 50 shades of grey. Everyone will be watching, everyone involved.

This is a sporting occasion that is more than just sport, a game of tennis that will draw in people who thought themselves forever immune to Wimbledon's very particular charms.

You can sense it in the omens that are doing the rounds in pubs and on Twitter - Virginia Wade won the ladies' title in the Queen's Silver Jubilee, so Murray must be fated to win the gentlemen's during Her Majesty's Diamond ding-dong; that in the summer the Olympics come back to Britain, so too must the famous old gilt-edged pot.

A personal favourite is one of the more convoluted ones: Fred Perry turned 25 on 18 May 1934, and two months later won the first of his three Wimbledon singles titles; Murray turned 25 on 15 May this year, and so...

Like all omens, they make convenient little mention of their own contradictions. The Golden Jubilee back in 2002 brought nothing but a semi-final defeat for Tim Henman (from a chippy Australian, to boot); the London Olympic year of 1948 saw Bob Falkenburg take the title back to the Hollywood royalty of the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles.

Perry played in trousers more formal than players today wear to the Wimbledon Winners' Ball.

The sensible will look for auguries instead in the statistics that separate Murray and Federer - or, in the case of this tournament so far, bind them together.

So far this fortnight, both men have played 22 sets. They are at 63.3% and 66.6% on their first serve, have hit a remarkably similar 237 to 222 winners and 103 to 88 unforced errors and both lost less than ten games on their own serve.

The reason Federer is slight favourite with most sage judges is not the last two weeks, nor the overall head-to-head between the pair, which has Murray standing at eight wins and Federer seven.

It is those previous meetings in Grand Slam finals, both won by Federer without Murray taking so much as a single set, as well as Federer's 23 previous Slam finals.

Then there is that near peerless record in SW19 - seven finals in eight years, with six golden titles and the only loss coming in the greatest Wimbledon final of all time.

Federer is not only the finest grass court player in history but a king who has made Centre his very own court. On Sunday he will have far more support than anyone hunting a homegrown hero has any right to expect.

So why then do Lendl and the rest of Murray's entourage believe that this time it can be different, that a man with 16 Grand Slam titles to his name can be usurped by a pretender who has previously only been flattened and deceived?

Dig a little deeper into Federer's magic numbers and the edifice shows its first cracks.
Federer, having won all but two of his first 14 Grand Slam finals, has now lost five of the subsequent nine.

It is three long summers since he last triumphed at Wimbledon; in each of the last two years he has gone out in the quarter-finals, and to Tomas Berdych and Tsonga - fine players, but neither eventual champions nor Grand Slam winners.

Federer is a month shy of his 31st birthday. Only two men in the Open era have won the Wimbledon title in their 30s: Rod Laver, way back in 1969, and Arthur Ashe in 1975.

The Federer of 2012 is still fully capable of the sublime tennis that made him the most popular player of his era. But, like all geniuses, his powers are not immune to the passing of time.

Perry, Laver, Borg and Becker; all virtuosos, all reduced to supporting roles by the end. If ever you were to take on their spiritual son Federer in a Wimbledon final, now is the moment.

He has been brilliant at times, not least in the first and third sets against Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals, and in the annihilation of Mikhail Youzhny in straight sets and just 92 minutes in the quarter-finals.

But Djokovic was far from the form that made him champion 12 months ago, and Youzhny is so much Federer's patsy (14 meetings, 14 defeats) that you expect him to prostrate himself when they toss for serve.

In his third round match against 29th seed Julien Benneteau, Federer was two sets down and staring into the abyss until the Frenchman froze; in the fourth against Xavier Malisse he required the regular intervention of the trainer to keep his body and title shot on track.

For all the weight of history on Murray's shoulders (286 Grand Slam finals have passed since a British man last won one) Federer has records of his own to worry about.

A win on Sunday would pull him level with Pete Sampras and William Renshaw at the top of the all-time Wimbledon titles list; it will also make him world number one again at a stage in his career when most thought it far beyond him.

Murray must start well, serve like a howitzer and keep his concentration from first to final point. He must target the Federer backhand and escape his forehand's cross-hairs.

More than that, he must reduce the dramas of that Tsonga semi, Ferrer fright and the 11.02pm finish versus Baghdatis to mere footnotes in a far grander tale.

If he can, the scenes on Centre last Friday will pale far, far into insignificance.

Women's semi-finals day is often a little low-key, but this was something else - a calm before the storm, a collective deep breath, a final mercifully stress-free few hours before Andy Murray's latest and surely most inviting opportunity to reach the promised land of a Wimbledon singles final.

A pearl of sporting trivia popular on Twitter rather summed it all up: the last man to be beaten by a Briton in a Wimbledon semi-final died at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

Murray will be battling that history and attendant sense of national pessimism as well as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga when he strides onto Centre on Friday afternoon.

No matter that he has beaten Tsonga in five of their six meetings, or that some bookmakers have him as short as 2-1 on to defeat the Frenchman once again. A nation simultaneously expects and fears the worst.

Murray Mania is usually taken to mean the hype that grips the media around this point in the championships. It could equally be used to describe the feverish experience of watching the man himself on court.

Tim Henman's Wimbledon campaigns used to leave partisan observers emotionally exhausted, fed through the mangler as he found a way to teeter on the brink of victory or duel with defeat at short quarter. You strapped yourself into the rollercoaster and hoped to enjoy the swoops and twists ahead.

There's something of the same with Murray, but with fewer giggles.

When Henman reached his four semi-finals here you had the sense of a player at the outer reaches of his optimum, maximising his talent and familiar conditions to get far closer to the old pot than we had a right to expect.

We demand more from Murray, a player blessed with a giddy array of shots, a track athlete's physique and a brain hard-wired for tactical supremacy.

When his game goes wrong it carries with it a sense of waste as well as regret. His backhand slice, simultaneously a wonderful weapon and blind indulgence, sums it up in a single shot. Every time one goes up a little piece of you dies: will this one land safe, or toss away a vital point?

Murray's relationship with the British sporting public, never straightforward, remains a puzzling one.

For every supporter who loves his flowing forehand and appreciates the bounty he is producing for British tennis in a time of otherwise near total famine, there is another who laments, however unjustly, his perceived inconsistencies on court and his taciturn persona off it.

No-one at Wimbledon on Thursday was going as far as saying they hoped he would lose. But there were plenty - from the Armed Forces servicemen on duty as stewards, to those revellers drinking by the giant screen, to the students working the food and merchandise concessions - happy to admit that they were yet to fall for Murray as they once did Tiger Tim.

It was a tale repeated among the touts. A straw poll of those loitering on Wimbledon Park Road, almost all of whom seemed to be wearing knock-off Lacoste polo shirts, answer to the name of Stan and hate eBay with a limitless passion, confirmed that business was not yet as lucrative as back in the day.

While black market tickets are in stiff demand, they are not hen's teeth. A monkey (£500 in non-tout terms) was securing a seat by the Centre Court rafters, with posh debentures coming in at four times that; those who were making deals were shelling out as much to witness Federer-Djokovic as Murray's fourth consecutive tilt in the last four.

For those who expect their sporting heroes to display the charisma of leading men as well as dazzle with their physical gifts, Murray's predisposition to monotone mutterings and a furrowed brow seem to make him harder to take to heart.

It's almost entirely unfair. In getting past an inspired David Ferrer in the quarter-finals Murray once again demonstrated enormous resolve and great skill under pressure. He has already achieved enough in his career so far to deserve a nation's grateful appreciation.

But this is British tennis, the most deluded of national sports, and this is Wimbledon, the least forgiving of sporting stages.

Lose to Nadal in consecutive Wimbledon semi-finals and no-one has much right to think any less of you. Lose to a man ranked below you, even in the last four and to a muscular maverick with a giant-killing reputation like Tsonga, and the critics and cynics will I-told-you-so until the Henman Hill fountains freeze over.

The semi-final against Tsonga represents Murray's best chance yet to convert those nonbelievers.

A showdown against Federer or Djokovic on Sunday would unite the nation in front of its televisions and laptops like little else in British sport. A victory would elevate him to a place few other British sportsmen could hope to inhabit.

And it is that prize, that possibility, that will make Friday afternoon such a ghastly, glorious nerve-shredder for all involved.

Which is why the decisive intervention of the Centre Court roof in this year's tournament is creating such a stink in the normally refined SW19 air.

All three of the most dramatic matches in the first week owed their ending and atmosphere to the 1,000 tonne lid on the famous old arena: Rafa Nadal's stunning second-round defeat by Lukas Rosol, Roger Federer's five-set comeback over Julien Benneteau and Andy Murray's late-night dash past Marcos Baghdatis.

Had it simply been raining in south-west London, the story would have slipped away there. That the roof came over in two of those cases because of bad light, and in the third at midday despite play continuing uninterrupted on all other courts, has put the All-England Club in something of a pickle.

Murray's match against Baghdatis finished just after the 11pm deadline on Saturday

Its own guidelines offer limited assistance. Section (a) of the Club's published roof protocol appears almost deliberately vague.

"The Championships is an outdoor daytime event. Therefore, in good weather, the roof will only be used if it is too dark to play on without it."

If that seems contradictory, the confusion does not end there. On Saturday night we had the curious sensation of Cinderella coming to Centre as Murray tried desperately to rattle through the decisive set before the church towers chimed 11.

Court-side there was bewilderment. Why was the cut-off time 11pm? How much wriggle-room would the officials allow? Why start if there was no chance of a finish?

Richard Lewis, chief executive AELTC, confirmed to the BBC on Monday the roof's original planning permission required play to end by that time.

"We are based in a residential area," he explained. "There are safety issues - transport has to be available at Southfields Station. We don't want 15,000 people stranded there.

"There was some communication with the local authority (Merton Council) on Saturday. It was relatively informal.

Centre Court stands out like a beacon when play goes into the evening

"We didn't have to bring the players off the moment the clock ticked from 10.59pm to 11pm; the aim was to stop the game at the fairest possible time for the players. 11pm is the definitive cut-off time and then we bring players off the court as fairly as possible."

Privately, Lewis is probably aware that Baghdatis's sudden capitulation saved him an even bigger headache. Had the match been suspended at such a critical point we may have witnessed the most middle-class riot in sporting history.

All three late-night matches created an atmosphere very different from the usual restrained Centre Court ambiance - boisterous, well refreshed, partisan in the extreme.

Many of the original ticket-holders had gone home, replaced by frantic fans that had queued all day at the re-sale booth on the back end of Henman Hill and enjoyed plenty of refreshment while doing so.

As with the denouement of Nadal's shock defeat, it created something rather special - an audience befitting such thrilling sporting theatre - as well as the scheduling of fantasy for television executives.

So should this signal the start of regular late-night sessions on Centre?

Both the US Open and Australian Open have held night matches for years; the French Open will do the same from 2017, when its own roof over Court Philippe Chatrier is complete.

Perhaps, goes one argument, Wimbledon should look for a solution at the other end of the day and follow the example of its cricketing cousin in St John's Wood by starting play on the show courts closer to the 11am of Lord's, rather than the current 1pm.

Lewis is unconvinced. "I think it's extremely unlikely that we would schedule night sessions at Wimbledon," he says.

"You take somewhere such as Melbourne - that's a city-centre location. Most people drive to the US Open.

"Early starts are a possibility. But we do get complaints from people travelling from all over the country who can't get here for a 1pm start.

"You've also got the situation where there is wear and tear on the court. And Centre Court is the one which is subject to more play than any other. We play on grass; it's a natural surface but there is wear and tear."

Lewis is being a little cute. If a spectator's journey is so long that they can only get to Wimbledon for 1pm, they're unlikely to be able to stay until 11.02pm, when Murray finally polished off Baghdatis.

It could be argued the later start is less about convenience and more about corporate. Test cricket has a 40-minute break for lunch and 20 minutes for tea built into its rhythm. Tennis does not, so corporate entertainment must create its own time.

There is another problem with Lewis's argument.

The All England Club might say they won't schedule night sessions, but by putting Murray on Centre under the lights at 7.30pm they were in effect doing exactly that.

A precedent has also been set that spectators now expect to see maintained. On Monday, with the roof on, the day's play was curtailed at 8pm despite Murray's match being unfinished, several other big ones yet to start and both conditions and crowd perfectly set for tennis.

From the players too there is a desire for clarity.

Nadal hinted heavily after his defeat to Rosol that the 40-minute delay to close the roof after he won the fourth set had cost him precious momentum. Murray went further, and said that Wimbledon's decision to have the roof shut all day on Friday was something "they might have made a mistake on".

The Briton also concedes that his status as home favourite may give him an additional advantage.

While his fourth-round match against Marin Cilic on Monday was on Court No.1 - and inevitably delayed by rain - his first three were on Centre, as will be any subsequent contests.

The roof allowed Murray to get his match finished on Saturday where others were delayed, giving him precious extra rest.

"Other years I would have had to play three sets on Monday," he admitted. "Cilic played 17-15 in the fifth set. I'm sure he would have rather I was having to play three sets on Monday before playing him."

Neither does the court behave in quite the same way. The Wimbledon surface has got noticeably slower over the past five years; under the roof and lights, that trend is even more noticeable.
We may have to get used to it.

The weather for the rest of this week is forecast to stay wet and grey. British summers are increasingly reliably unreliable. And Lewis, intriguingly, may have controversial ideas about how to cope with them.

"A roof on Court One is under consideration," he admitted to the BBC, "although it's not as straight-forward as you might think."
For Wimbledon in this soggy summer, very little is.

The reasoning, if reckless, was simple: for the first time since 2006, five British players had made it through to the second round of Wimbledon.

Thursday would see if further miracles could be wrought in the rare summer sunshine: perhaps three players into the third round for the first time since 2002, or two women out of round two for the first time in 26 years.

]]> second set had gone the same way.

Anne Keothavong was the first British faller on Thursday. Photo: Getty Images

This being British tennis, it came as a disappointment rather than a surprise.

With Andy Murray marching onto Centre Court for his duel with heavy-serving Ivo Karlovic at almost exactly the same time that James Ward was about to take on Mardy Fish on No.1 Court, there was still time for something uplifting to emerge.

Murray had his work cut out, but gradually began to exert control, just as most expected. Just as no-one expected, the unheralded Ward came back from a 6-3 first set loss to win the second 7-5, against a man ranked 161 places higher than him in the world.

Hope, always present in the hearts of British fans, even if latent, sprang again when Ward battled back from match point down to take the contest into a fifth set as Murray wriggled past Karlovic in their fourth-set tie-break.

On Henman Hill, the reddening fans - and they are fans on Henman Hill, rather than the more pretentious or po-faced patron - cheered and drank and whooped it up.

It couldn't last. Rankings can be wrong, but they are seldom entirely inaccurate. Fish gradually took control, slowly at first and then with growing dominance to bring the dream to an end 6-3 5-7 6-4 6-7 (3-7) 6-3.

If only Elena Baltacha had been able to take inspiration. Her straight sets defeat to fourth seed Petra Kvitova may have been predictable, but 0-6 4-6 still stung nonetheless. Murray is through.

So is Heather Watson, who if she beats Agnieszka Radwanska on Friday will be the first British woman in the last 16 since Sam Smith in 1998.

Behind them, it all looks all too familiar, all too predictable.

"We're always looking for positives and it is a positive, but it's the same old story really," says John Lloyd, former French Open finalist and Wimbledon mixed doubles champion.

"We get a win or two and we're so happy about it, but for the outlay and what we put into the game it should be normal, to be honest.

"Yes, it's nice to see British players winning some matches, but it isn't that good in the grander scheme of things. It's still not what it should be."

James Ward went down fighting against American Mardy Fish. Photo: AFP

It's now 15 years since Britain had four players in the third round of Wimbledon. Murray, famously, owes his success as much to his mother's coaching and the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona as he does the Lawn Tennis Association.

Roger Draper has overseen a shake-up of elite development at the LTA, turning the focus from big-name coaches to home-grown talent. Leon Smith is now not only Davis Cup captain but performance director in all but name.

Has it done anything to re-write the narrative of British disappointment at Wimbledon?

"It's good to see British players picking up a few wins but they should be given the amount of investment," says Jo Durie, former world number five.

"If you go back to Virginia Wade's time or even mine - I followed after Virginia, Ann Jones and Sue Barker - we had quite a few getting through rounds.

"There's so much more media coverage than in those days that everything is hyped up so much and there's maybe more pressure on them to perform, it's harder - but the funding everyone gets now is unbelievable.

"Honestly, we hardly had anything. So where are the hundreds of them?

"The LTA's decision to switch from high-profile coaches was key for the future. There's some very good coaches out there and it's critical that we allow these coaches to have their journey with their players because how else will you learn and get to the top?

"Let's all work together. We are trying to do that. If you don't back the clubs and the club coaches, and give them incentives and motivation to produce players, we'll never improve.

"My little club in Bristol when I was 11 or 12 had loads of juniors, with a coach who was very proactive and really did his own thing. It's all about people rather than places.

"The problem is that the so-called 'success' comes in batches. We've got four women at the moment who are doing well. After them, what are we looking at?

"In the men, we're scrabbling around a bit, to be truthful. Grass is a strange surface, it's a great time for Brits to get wins - and at Wimbledon, in particular, with mega ranking points on offer - but it's what you do in the rest of the year.

"The four girls do perform in the rest of the year, which is great. But the men are nowhere near those kind of standards."

Additional reporting by David Ornstein.]]> tag:www.bbc.co.uk,2012:/blogs/tomfordyce//207.308705 2012-06-26T06:34:01Z 2012-06-26T06:48:37Z

Andy Murray, ardent football fan, could be forgiven for having watched the England football team's displays at the European Championships with a certain amount of jealousy.

Not because he wanted them to lose (that was a mis-quote and a long time ago) but for the near-complete absence of expectation around their performances.

For while the English sporting public appear to have accepted that 23 men plus one wise old coach cannot be expected to end a 46-year wait for another trophy, they still seem to believe that one young man should end a far more malevolent hoodoo stretching back a further 30 years.

Very little about Wimbledon fortnight is particularly fair on Murray. On a surface that is not his favourite, after a build-up marred by injury and uncertain form, watched by millions who ignore tennis for the remaining 50 weeks of the year, he must either be crowned champion or forever be thought of as a failure, glorious or plucky or otherwise.

]]> All this - and three of the greatest players in history to get past?

"In January I thought the gap between Andy and Rafa, Roger and Novak was getting smaller," says Richard Krajicek, Wimbledon champion in 1996 and back this year as an expert for BBC Radio 5 live. "Now I'm not so sure.

"This year those top three guys have been playing amazing tennis. Let's take just one of them. In my time there was Michael Chang who ran everything down and, as his opponent, that gave you real problems. Rafa is at another level above that altogether.

"He is so fast that you have to hit the ball even closer into the corner of the court, so close that you can easily go a fraction long or wide. When you make the error, you start doubting yourself - was that the right shot? Am I playing badly?

"I call it the Rafa Bonus. He makes you insecure. He makes you doubt yourself. He makes you take risks that you don't want to take."

Andy Murray heads to Wimbledon having lost all three of his preparation matches. Photo: Reuters

Nadal has beaten Murray at Wimbledon in all three of their meetings. Murray has lost to Djokovic and Federer, twice, in the three Grand Slam finals he has made. So what does he need to add to his game to break through that cut-glass ceiling?

"Murray is at a very high standard," says Krajicek. "Physically he is at the same level as the big three. He has shown plenty of times that he can produce their level of tennis.

"What he needs is to believe that. That sounds like a strange thing to say, but he needs more confidence in his game. He needs to remind himself that the top three are scared of his game and of his strength.

"A little more belief in his game would take him a long way. I don't think he has to worry so much. Don't worry about hitting winners, don't worry about taking your time in a point. There is a middle ground between passive and going all out for winners, and that's where he wants to be.

"Tactically he could certainly come to the net more. He came in against Federer in their last few meetings but sometimes did it off the wrong approach shot and got passed. He then stopped doing it, whereas what he should have done is keep doing it but off the right ball.

"Sometimes he doesn't seem to realise how big a game he has. I think he can out-hit both Rafa and Novak. Roger maybe has more power, but Murray is close behind.

"I wish I had possessed his game. He maybe isn't as consistent as those three above him, but neither was I and I still won a Grand Slam title. He has to believe in his game and there will be a Wimbledon or US Open title for him."

Some might consider Murray cursed to be at his peak when Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are all close to theirs. Andre Agassi has told the BBC that Murray would have won "multiple" Slams in another era.

Across all four of the Slams, there is now far less room for a Petr Korda, Thomas Johansson or Thomas Muster to sneak through on the inside and snatch one of the big ones. At Wimbledon, there is no sign of an opening to exploit as Goran Ivanisevic did in 2001 and Lleyton Hewitt in 2002.

Might Murray have to accept that he will be bracketed instead with the Tsongas, Berdychs and Soderlings rather than that trio of elites, that he may have to play the same role as Miloslav Micir in the 1980s and Marcelo Rios in the '90s?

"He shouldn't think about being unlucky," advises Krajicek. "It is very, very hard to be ranked number one right now. He can win big tournaments, Grand Slams, world tour finals - that's where his chances are for me. Not being number one.

"The dominance of those big three with ranking points is extraordinary. When I was on the tour, Pete Sampras was the best player by some margin but he wasn't winning as much as they are. It was the same with Stefan Edberg. Rafa Nadal has been world number two for longer than anyone else and we don't think less of him.

What of Murray's age? To win your first Grand Slam at his current age of 25 is historically unlikely. With the exceptions of those rogue champions above, the big winners start early and carry on.

"Andy has to make sure that he doesn't start to believe he might have missed the boat," says Krajicek.

"I feel positive for him. For the last three years I've been telling tennis fans in Holland that he will win a Grand Slam event. He could have won Wimbledon last year, had he been able to maintain the level he was at in the first set of the semi-final against Nadal.

"In his coach Ivan Lendl he has the perfect example. It took Lendl a long time to win a Grand Slam too, yet he kept believing and kept working. Once he got that break - in his case, coming from two sets down to beat John McEnroe at the French Open in 1984 - he went on to win another seven. Andre Agassi too - he lost his first three Slam finals. It takes time but you can make that step."

And what if this fortnight, as with so many before, fails to end Fred Perry's unwanted record? How then should the country treat its vanquished son?

"If he doesn't win Wimbledon he is still a great player. People say Lendl failed at Wimbledon. Ask him and he will point to two finals and five semi-finals on his worst surface.

"If Andy lost in the first round five times in a row you could call him a failure. Instead he has made three semi-finals, playing in the toughest era in tennis history. Britain should appreciate the player it has."

]]>

"Starting off an interview like that you're going to be told where to go. Could you not just say it was a long time ago?"

The question concerned the 25 years that have passed since his holy trinity of triumphs in the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and World Championship. The answer, because it is Roche, sets the tone for the hour ahead: charming, convivial and with a little hint of steel just below the surface.

I have come to talk of that famous triptych, matched in history only by Eddy Merckx, of audiences with the Pope and President Mitterrand, of Wiggins and Lance and the dark doping allegations at the end of his own career that Roche, with typical lyricism, will later refer to as "the old potholes of the past".

Roche's battle with Pedro Delgado in 1987 was an epic. Photo: AFP

Because Roche speaks at about the same pace he used to time-trial, it would take a month of blogs to faithfully record all the tales. His new autobiography, Born To Ride, does all of that with characteristic elan.

But if the Tour was the greatest triumph in his annus mirabilis of 1987, then stage 21, from Bourg-d'Oisans to La Plagne, was his defining hour - a whirlwind of drama, high chance and extraordinary bravery that remains one of the great iconic displays his sport has seen.

"All through my career I've done some incredible things," he says. "But this is one day when I look back and think, Stephen, how did you manage to keep your cool?"

Almost 1,000km longer than this year's race, the 1987 Tour was an epic - 25 stages, eight different men in yellow, time-trials that lasted 87km or ended up Mont Ventoux.
For a master strategist like Roche, it became a thing of obsession.

"I loved the tactics. There was always something incredibly natural about it to me, always wondering what was going on and why it was happening. When you're in there fine-tuning your bike, your plans, analysing your opponents, their weak points... I have fire burning inside me with all this stuff, and I feel I'm taking it all in, I've got to get one up on everyone else.

"That kind of adrenaline... you couldn't touch me before a stage. It was like touching an electrical wire. Boom! I would blow.

"It was all in my head - the gears, the tactics, the cornering, my opponents, everything building up inside. It's an amazing feeling to have. It's all winding, winding, winding up inside you, waiting to explode."

A blistering time-trial performance into Futuroscope and dogged solo pursuit on Stage 19 ("I rode my eyeballs out") meant that, with less than a week to go, the race would come down to two men: Roche, and Spanish hero Pedro Delgado.

"He was a real climber, much better than me in the mountains, but I knew I could beat him in the final time-trial in Dijon," remembers Roche.

"I calculated that with me on a bad day and Delgado on a good day, I could put a minute into him in Dijon. So it meant that whatever happened through the Alps, from the Ventoux to Morzine, I had to be within 60 seconds."

At the end of Stage 20 into L'Alpe d'Huez, Delgado held yellow by 25 seconds. The next morning, with the climbs of the Galibier, Telegraphe and Madeleine all lying in wait, Roche knew the decisive day was upon him.

"It was brutal. In the early part of the stage there were a lot of falls. The Colombians kept riding hard. We were saying, 'Back off guys, people are falling...' but they kept riding, riding, and we kept holding on, holding on.

"I said to (Charly) Mottet and Delgado, we have to drop them on the descent of Galibier, or else they'll kill us on the climbs. So we tore down the descent. The Colombians weren't there any more and Delgado was isolated from his team-mates.

"I thought, this is my chance here. There's a group 40 seconds ahead - if I go now, Delgado will have to wait for his team-mates. If I can get a gap of two or three minutes on the Madeleine before he can get organised, I can win the stage and I can win the race.
"So off I went, and at the foot of the Madeleine I found that no-one could ride with me. I rode the whole thing myself and down the other side.

"But Delgado had now regrouped. He chased and chased, and caught me a few kilometres before the start of the climb into La Plagne.

"I tried putting myself in his shoes. What would he do? I thought he would attack. Then my own shoes. If I go after him, he'll go again and again and again, and I'll never make it to the top.

"So my plan came together: let him go, stay within distance and try to recuperate. My thing was, if I went with him, I wouldn't make it. So let him go and let him think he's made it, hold the gap, and with 4km to go just give it everything. Hopefully he will come back to me and I can somehow hold him to 35 seconds and keep my minute."

If it was a brave move, it was also recklessly optimistic. What if Delgado just kept going? What if Roche, when he tried to accelerate, found he had nothing left?

"He got to 30 seconds, then 40 seconds, then 50. I'm trying to keep my tempo. Then I notice that, as I get into my rhythm, that the gap is going up by five seconds at a time rather than 10, then two, then one.

"I think, it's working! I stabilise the gap at one minute 25. I think, maybe he's shot his bolt. Maybe I can hold him here.

"Him in his own brain, he's thinking one min 25 up, add the 25 this morning, that's 1.50 overall, should be enough for the time trial. I'm telling myself that's what he's thinking. So if I can accelerate at 4km, at 3km, he may think he's okay. There'll be confusion."

Confusion there was. With the only two television cameras on stage leader Laurent Fignon and the perspiring Delgado, Roche was closing in by stealth, unnoticed and ignored by riders and reporters alike.

"I had done a recce beforehand. I knew the final 4km. I knew it wasn't too difficult - it was rolling. I should be able to sustain a big effort over 4km.

"So I give it everything I have. I found resources. I need to claw back at least 45 seconds, but I can't see where he is - the crowds, the zig-zag roads. I've no race radio. Any information my own car might have had from the race director I won't hear because of the noise.

"I feel myself working through my gears. There's a burning in my legs, but it's not a killing burn. It's hurting all right, but I can cope with this burn for 4km. The fire is lit inside. I'm riding almost to explosion, but if I explode I will drop.

"Five hundred metres to go, the road opens out, and I put - crunch! - the chain on the big ring. It was like going from first gear to fifth in a car. For a moment I locked up, stalled. Then it picked up again and I got the chain turning over, waggh waggh, faster and faster, and then on the final corner, there was Delgado."

Roche, in his own poetic words, "buried myself to the line". The ensuing pandemonium is best captured in that famous piece of television commentary from Phil Liggett, like everyone else caught completely unaware by Roche's heroics.

"Just who is that rider coming up behind - because that looks like Roche! That looks like Stephen Roche... it's Stephen Roche, has come over the line! He almost caught Pedro Delgado, I don't believe it!"

Surrounded by journalists and photographers, Roche collapsed on to his crossbar and on to the ground.

"The doctor puts the oxygen mask on me straight away. 'Stephen, move your legs in...' and I can't move my legs. I can move nothing. He's trying to put a survival blanket on me, and I can't move my arms."

For 10 minutes Roche's only method of communicating with the medical team was by blinking his eyes. When, eventually, he regained movement in the back of an ambulance, his first words to the frantic reporters asking for reassurance would become cycling legend: "Everything's okay, mais pas de femme ce soir."

True to his calculations, Roche would recover to beat Delgado by exactly 61 seconds in that Dijon time-trial, giving him the yellow jersey by 40 seconds as he rode into Paris and up the Champs-Elysees.

A few days later, after those audiences with Pope John Paul II and President Mitterand, 500,000 people would turn out on the streets of Dublin to welcome the native son home.

Half his lifetime has passed since that warm July day. But as I sit opposite him, watching the animation and adrenaline, the exploits and the impact of Roche's most famous day in the saddle feel as alive as they did a quarter of a century ago.

Stephen Roche's Born To Ride is out now. You can hear more from Tom's interview with him on Blood, Sweat and Gears, 5 live Sport's Tour de France 2012 preview show on Tuesday 26 June from 20:30 BST.

That first group, the select selected, left the Alexander Stadium knowing their job was done. With both a top-two finish in their event and the 'A' standard to their name, 33 athletes ensured they would be heading to London as part of the British Olympic squad.

The hopefuls were those who failed to compete in their events in Birmingham but whose form and standing make them almost certain of a discretionary place - former world triple jump champion Phillips Idowu, world indoor triple jump champion Yamile Aldama, world 10,000m gold medallist Mo Farah and world 1500m silver medallist Hannah England.

Then we come to the last - and largest - group: those with neither the guaranteed place nor the form or history to be sure the selectors will give them the nod.

For these athletes, the next week will make or break their chances of competing in a home Olympics. And it will be a very anxious seven days indeed.

Dwain Chambers celebrates his 100m victory at the Trials. But will he secure an Olympic spot? Picture: Getty

Some, like Dwain Chambers, 800m man Mohammed Muktar and former world 1500m silver medallist Lisa Dobriskey, have their fate in their own hands. For these two and others who finished in the top two in Birmingham this weekend but without the 'A' standard, they have until 1 July to secure the required mark and guarantee their selection.

The European Championships in Helsinki, which begin on Wednesday, will provide the ideal stage for some.

Others, like long jumper Lorraine Ugen, whose second place on Sunday came with a leap just a single centimetre off the all-important 'A', will be desperately seeking good conditions at a far more low-key meet.

Ugen is one of the more unlucky ones. The 'A' standard for the women's long jump is 6.75 metres, in an event where 6.76m was good enough for a world bronze medal last summer.

With Shara Proctor already nailed on for long jump selection following her Trials win in a new British record of 6.95m, Ugen is up against one of the unshakeable principles of UK Athletics' selection policy: while an athlete who has two 'B' standards can be picked on discretion, it can only happen if no 'A' athletes have also been picked.

Chambers is a little more fortunate. He needs a far more forgiving 10.18 seconds or less to secure a 100m slot, and Helsinki should see him do it comfortably. But even then he, like Dobriskey, has hope; as an athlete with two or more 'A' standards from last summer, he can also benefit from the selectors' discretionary option.

Then there are those who have the 'A' standard but not the top-two finish - European 800m silver medallist Michael Rimmer, 400m hurdler Rhys Williams, 100m man James Dasaolu.

Rimmer will aim to make a convincing case for the discretionary place in Helsinki.

Others - including injured stars like Jenny Meadows - may have to wait with fingers crossed, hoping the selectors both believe that they can improve before London and decide that they can make an impact when they get there.

If that sounds complicated, it reflects the tense, frenetic nature of the entire Trials. Seldom has so much been riding on so many events.

There were athletes who came out of it all with spirits bolstered.

World 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene and reigning 400m Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogu showed with their dominant victories that they are getting back towards their best; on-form stars like Shara Proctor, Greg Rutherford and Robbie Grabarz underlined their medal potential in difficult conditions; young stars like Andy Pozzi, Lawrence Okoye and Holly Bleasdale confirmed their burgeoning talents.

In places the quality was high. British records for long jumper Proctor and pole vaulter Bleasdale were all the more impressive for the cold, windy weather.

Adam Gemili drapes the British flag round his shoulders after securing an Olympic spot by finishing second in the 100m. Will he take up the place? Picture: Getty

Elsewhere there was sobering evidence that Olympic qualification is only the first step in a far more difficult process.

A day after Chambers won the 100m in Birmingham in 10.25 secs, Justin Gatlin was winning the US Trials in 9.80 secs. 9.93 secs only got you third. With the Jamaican trials next weekend likely to showcase similar times, British sprinters are, on current form, unlikely to even make the Olympic final.

I said there were three categories. That's not quite true. There is a fourth, as abnormal as it is intriguing: those who have automatic qualification, but aren't yet convinced they should take it up.

Adam Gemili's second place in the 100m, a month after going a tenth of a second under the 'A' standard of 10.18 secs, means he is the sole athlete with this unique decision to make.

Less than a year ago, the 18-year-old former Chelsea trainee's sole aim was to make the relay team for the World Junior championships this summer.

Thanks to a brilliant few months, this rawest of talents (he only switched to athletics full-time at the start of the year) now has an opportunity many far more experienced sprinters would kill for. Whether he will take it is another matter.

Gemili himself seemed unsure at the weekend. His coach Michael Afilaka, wary of the problems experienced by other young sprint talents like Asha Philip and Ashleigh Nelson, says the decision is no more than "51-49" in favour of London.

"If you throw him into the cauldron of Olympics and he gets burned then he might never recover," Afilaka says.

"I'm very clear what that competition is and it's brutal - from getting kitted out to walking into the Olympic Stadium. I've been there, seen it, trust me. He's not just a young kid, he's young to athletics. I'm not saying no, but it really has to be a day-by-day decision."

Should he stay, or should he go? London might be calling, but this is one man who may yet not answer.

In fighting through the exhaustion, emotion and cold drizzle to win the French Open 6-4 6-3 2-6 7-5, Rafa Nadal ensured that this time it was he, not his electric adversary Novak Djokovic, who required the record books to be erased and re-written.

Seven French Open titles, by the still remarkably tender age of 26, puts Nadal alone in the Parisian pantheon, clear of a record of Bjorn Borg's that once looked impossible to surpass. Djokovic, stoic in damp defeat, must wait another year at least to join those elite players who have held all four Grand Slam titles at the same time.

If it rained on Rafa's parade in Paris, it was an equally unexpected coronation for those watching rapt court-side or glued to the battle via their televisions in the UK.

Neither was the match quite - quite - the eyeballs-out, all-time classic most had hoped for. Those frequent rain delays made it feel like watching a great film interrupted by breaks for TV adverts and the 10 O'clock news, the narrative disrupted and the tension dissipated just as the plot was threatening to sweep us away as it had during the Australian Open final five months ago.

Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have now met five times in big finals. Photo: Getty

Maybe we have been spoiled by that near six-hour Melbourne marvel. The peaks, as we have come to expect of these two remarkable men, were as lofty as ever. But that the match was lost on a double fault was perhaps fitting when the unforced error count was the key statistic that separated the two.

Djokovic almost matched Nadal in clean winners (34 to 39), first serve percentage (59% to 62%) and total points won (116 to 125). He was more ruthless on break points. But in shipping 53 errors to the Spaniard's 29 he created the openings that a competitor like Nadal does not give up.

Free points, when facing a player with Rafa's armoury, equate to suicide. His forehand alone is enough to trigger surrender.

On days like Monday, when it cut and chopped Djokovic to pieces, the gasps of astonishment in the crowd were mixed with shrugs of Serbian sympathy.

It is a frightening weapon, a horror to scare children to sleep and give grown men nightmares. At the same time it is a thing of beauty, admired and cherished by everyone except the poor unfortunate facing it down across the net.

That it was the result most wise men expected, despite Djokovic's top seeding, should not detract from the magnitude of Nadal's achievement.

His magnificent seven at Roland Garros means he now has 11 Grand Slam titles overall, just one behind Roy Emerson, three behind Pete Sampras and five away from the record of 16 held by Roger Federer.

How many more French Opens can he win? Time and form remain on his side. Three years ago only tendonitis looked like stopping him, but even that debilitating knee condition looks to be in check, if not beaten.

He dropped just one set en route to this latest triumph, and that on Sunday as the heavy rain tethered his topspin forehands temporarily to the wet clay. Since he first set foot on these famous courts he has amassed 52 wins and only one loss, a half-century that neatly accompanies his 50 career singles titles and $50m in career prize money.

Borg, his predecessor as the king of clay, was a fitting icon of his era - long hair, tiny shorts, a laconic rock star pin-up for playboy times.

Nadal is equally symbolic of our own age: a player at hyperspeed in a non-stop world, physique carved by obsession, a dominance built on power and ruthless application of superior strength.

As he celebrated on Monday by climbing up into the crowd in search of his uncle Toni, his vanquished opponent sat upright in his chair, staring intently at the plasters on his fingers rather than the cavorting up above.

It was the result that most wise men expected despite Djokovic's battling performance. Photo: Getty

Djokovic will see these as crumbs, but in extending Nadal to almost four hours he had given him his toughest French final yet. To win eight games in a row against the best player ever to step foot on clay, at his peak, is a little miracle all of its own.

He will also know, once the immediate disappointment fades, that Paris was just another chapter in a rivalry which should illuminate the men's game for many Grand Slams yet to come.

Five times these two have now met in the big finals. Even after this defeat Djokovic leads the series. With his Wimbledon crown to defend in a fortnight's time he may not have to wait long for his revenge.

For those of us on the outside, watching spellbound as another layer is added to a rivalry that already has so much, there is delight in what has gone before and relish at what may follow.

These are momentous times for Nadal, but they are also remarkable for men's tennis - for its quality, its depth and its triumvirate of complementary heroes at the top of the rankings.

If all three of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer will leave the game among its all-time greats, on Monday it was another storied band whose ranks Nadal symbolically joined.

The trophy that he raised with tears in his eyes, the Coupe des Mousquetaires, pays tribute to the four Frenchmen who lit up world tennis 80 years ago.

Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste, 20 Grand Slam singles titles between them, were immortalised in sporting myth as the Four Muskeketeers. In Nadal, they have their D'Artagnan .

Just as Bolt was 2011 IAAF male athlete of the year, so 100m hurdler Pearson was voted the world's best female. Unlike Bolt, Pearson also won World Championship gold - and in a time that no-one had got close to since the dubious days of the late 1980s.

With that personal best 0.2 seconds faster than any of her rivals and a record of 10 wins in her 11 big races last summer, the 25-year-old Queenslander has arrived in Oslo this week knowing two things: that Australia expects, and that she must deliver.

"Everyone has wanted a piece of me in Australia," she admits. "It's so much fun to be leaving - I've been counting down from seven weeks to go. I'm so excited to get to Europe and be ready to run."

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.

Not since Cathy Freeman has her home country invested so much hope in an athlete. "There is a page of Olympic history waiting for her name," declared The Australian newspaper, around the time she was packing her bags. "When you are in the kind of form she is in at the moment, you have to take advantage," says Eric Hollingsworth, Athletics Australia's high performance manager.

Others might find the pressure too much to bear. Pearson, with a chipper confidence stereotypical of her home state, is resolutely pragmatic.

"It's not terrifying if you don't think about it," she says, of her chances of joining compatriots Shirley Strickland, Maureen Caird and Debbie Flintoff-King as Olympic hurdles gold medallists.

"You have to make sure your mind is on yourself. I definitely feel like I'm going in as number one.

"No-one will be stepping out on that track with the intention of coming second. It will definitely be hard. But if I can get back to PB shape, then it will be very hard to beat me."

I mention an unhappy omen: no woman has ever won the sprint hurdles title at the World Championships and then followed it with Olympic gold the following year.

Pearson guffaws. "Yeah, I've seen that. But those sorts of things don't bother me. I can only control what my body does. All the outside distractions I can't, so I just leave them as they are - as distractions.

"I've put all those superstitions to bed in the past, especially at the World Championships. I blew that out of the water."

Ah, the infamous Daegu cover curse. Until Pearson's storming run, no athlete featured on the front page of the daily official programme - Bolt, Dayron Robles, Steve Hooker and Yelena Isinbayeva - had won gold. When Pearson did, she celebrated by stamping theatrically on the offending publication.

"It actually ended with the walker [Olga Kaniskina]," she laughs. "She broke it. Then suddenly the curse was shifted so it was only affecting things in the stadium. It was like, ah, make your mind up!

"I think everyone on the cover had been a world champion before and I wasn't, so I took it as a nice compliment for me that they respected me and my results that season and thought I was good enough to be on it. Plus I think Blanka Vlasic was begging not to be on it..."

Pearson was triumphant in Daegu. Photo: Getty

Pearson's time that night, a blistering 12.28 seconds, was the fourth fastest in history, just 0.07 seconds off the world record set by Bulgaria's Yordanka Donkova in 1988.

Both the time of Donkova and the woman she herself surpassed, compatriot Ginka Zagorcheva, are tainted by suspicions of illegal doping. While neither ever tested positive, there is sufficient doubt that many insiders in Daegu last summer rated Pearson's mark as an unofficial best ever. Does she agree?

"No. No point. It's not a world record. It's not in the history books as a world record. No matter whether people think [Donchova's] record is clean or not, it's still there. It hasn't been scratched out. What's on paper is what matters."

But she must know, as a student of her event, that those times were extraordinary? Media training aside, does she not tacitly agree with those experts who consider her the fastest in history?

"Well, they're not officials saying that, are they? They're opinions. That's all they are.

"It's not the officials saying, 'Oh, we'll just make it the supposedly clean world record'. We don't know if it was clean or not. We don't have any proof of that, so it stands.

"I don't target that record in any of my races. Obviously everyone wants to run as fast as possible to give themselves the confidence, but for me it's more about winning every single race.

"It would nice to run a similar time to the one I ran in Daegu, but world records don't always give you Olympic gold medals. People can also take world records away from you. But they can't take away Olympic golds."

Pearson, raised by her Kent-born mother, Ann, in the absence of her father, has had to work to get to her current exalted status.

Ann worked extra jobs to get her young daughter coaching and physio, and took her to the Little Athletics state championships in Townsville in 1999 where she was spotted by her first - and permanent - coach, Sharon Hannon.

Pearson has responded with a relentless dedication, putting in sessions so hard that, "I actually felt like I was going to die." It is why, she says, she celebrates with such wild abandon when big wins and medals come her way.

"Oh God yeah. You put your heart and your soul into your training, and when you get to competition you want a result that reflects all that hard work you've been doing.

"It's a huge release, an energy uplift. I don't know if it happens to everyone, but I simply can't hold it back. I've been holding it back for so long."

Has she imagined what it might feel like to stand on top of the podium in London?
"I definitely think about it. I thought about it at the World Championships. But at the same time I think about the worst-case scenario, which is not winning the race.

"I think about those negatives as a way to keep me grounded, to realise that it may not go to plan. Really quickly I try to cross it out of my mind, but I always allow myself to think about it for a second before I go back to thinking positive, thinking about what I want to do and then making sure I do it."

Twelve years ago Freeman defied the pressure to win 400m gold in Sydney. Asked recently about Pearson's chances of doing the same, she was sanguine: "Sally has such a wonderful ability to focus, and really keep her life simple and effective."

Her appointed successor shrugs.

"If you keep it simple it's easy. Make it complicated and it's hard.

"That's why I think about those worst-case scenarios. You have to stay grounded. It keeps your thinking simple, and it keeps you hungry."

Not so long ago a series win was a cause for national celebration. Slightly longer ago it was such a rarity that there would also be genuine surprise.

That we have become so accustomed to victory that a nine-wicket win - making it seven series wins at home in succession - prompts admissions from skipper and sages of a lack of ruthlessness speaks volumes for how significantly ability and expectations have shifted since then.

England have never before won seven home series on the bounce. Only twice have they won six, between 1882 and 1896 and from 1955 to 1960.

The pressure is now off captain Andrew Strauss after England take a 2-0 series lead against West Indies. Photo: Getty  

Those who had made the trip to Trent Bridge on Monday were certainly celebrating as England went 2-0 up in the three-Test series. Choruses of "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands," echoed round the ground as Jonathan Trott struck the winning runs.

Elsewhere there were logical caveats: it's only the West Indies; it's only at home; don't forget the winter. But in the detail of England's win were reasons aplenty to revel in a special era for England and their supporters.

As Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook set about calmly knocking off the 108 needed for victory, they eased past another landmark - 5,000 runs in partnership at Test level, by a distance the highest aggregate of any England pair.

As an opening combination they are unsurpassed in English history. Only two other pairs - Haynes and Greenidge, and Langer and Hayden - stand above them as more prolific Test openers.

If those statistics give pause for thought, Strauss's successes in the summer so far should keep the numbers ticking over for a while to come.

After a troubled winter and 2011 prior to that, this short series has proved the ideal balm for the captain. With 309 runs from four innings at an average of 77, he has been the premier batsman on display. With 21 Test centuries he is just one off the record jointly held by Wally Hammond, Colin Cowdrey and Geoff Boycott. At some stage over the next 12 months he is likely to pass them.

So too is Kevin Pietersen, currently on 20. Alastair Cook, 19 to his name so far, will follow suit; Ian Bell, with 16 at the moment and arguably with at least another five years in Test cricket ahead of him, could yet do the same.

However strong your attachment to the heroes of old, that is a remarkable demonstration of the depth and class of England's current batsmen - and the same can be said of the bowling attack.

A little lost in the arguments about player rotation for the third Test was perhaps the key reason why England are even thinking about resting James Anderson and Stuart Broad - because they can afford to.

England currently have four players in the world's top 15 ranked bowlers. Not since 1958, when the likes of Trueman, Statham, Tyson, Laker and Lock ruled the roost, have they had so many so high.

Just as during the last Ashes, when they could lose Broad to injury and drop their leading wicket-taker in the series (Steve Finn) yet still win the next two Tests, they have a strength in depth that allows rotation without significantly weakening the attack.

Finn and Graham Onions both await their chance having played key roles in winning the last two Ashes series. Chris Tremlett, when back to full fitness, would stride into any Test side in the world.

It's easy to forget that Trent Bridge man of the match Tim Bresnan is a second choice himself. Yet here is a man who has won every one of the 13 Tests in which he has played, and who has a significantly better Test bowling and batting average than Andrew Flintoff.

Freddie averaged 32 with the ball and 31 with the bat. Bresnan is currently on 25 with ball and 40 with bat. There was of course more to Flintoff's career than mere numbers. But England's current strength in depth is enough to make national skippers of the 1980s and 1990s bilious with envy.

The same cannot be said of the West Indies who appear to be a two-speed team. At times in both Tests they have shown great application and perseverance, only to then capitulate at a dramatic rate.

In Marlon Samuels, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Kemar Roach and Darren Sammy they have a nucleus of a combative side. In the top order they do not.

In comparison to the successes of Strauss and those immediately after him, the West Indies' top four batsmen have scored 203 runs between them from an aggregate of 16 innings. Not one of them averages more than 19. Poor Kirk Edwards, so at sea that you expect him to walk to the wicket trailing distress flares, is averaging two.

Only so many times can you be rescued by those below you. If the Windies boat is no longer sinking with all hands, it is still listing badly.

"There are some natural flaws in terms of techniques," says Sir Viv Richards, perhaps the greatest West Indian batsmen of them all and in England this summer as a Test Match Special analyst.

"The top four failed to come to grips with the requirements for the conditions they were facing from pitch and bowlers.

"You only need to look at how Samuels and Sammy played in the first innings to see how different it could have been. Even at the point they came in, with six wickets down, they played the pitch rather than the situation.

"It was easy for batting - they should have gone on. There were runs out there to be made. These guys are filled with lots of ability. When you look at young Kieran Powell in the first innings, he got to 33 looking good. If you can't play, you won't get to 33.

"But the ball he got out to was the sort he had been leaving up to that point - and should have been leaving again. Test batting is all about what you have mentally, and if you can't equip yourself with what you need in the middle then you need to find another job."
Dominant in the decades when England languished, the West Indies have now not won a series in this country since 1988.

They have won just one of their last 25 Tests against the nation they used to blackwash with such frightening ease in the 1980s, and since February 2009 they have won only two of their last 32 Tests against all opposition. Defeat at Edgbaston could see them drop to eighth in the ICC Test rankings.

If it is a ghastly time for them, it does not take the gloss from England's accomplishments. In the bad times there was no escaping the misery. Perhaps the good times should be relished in similarly unfettered fashion.