Young guns can walk tall

"Yes, it is getting near the time where the youngsters do need to step up and be accountable," Darren Campbell says. "There's pressure always put on us 'old guys' about having to deliver but we need to start looking now at the new talent and really help them to come through. We need them to rise to the occasion and really surprise."

His dearest wish, and that of his sport, is that this next wave of talent can now make its mark, starting this weekend at Manchester's Sports City arena where the AAA Championships, which double as the trials, are crying out for a demonstration that British athletes can be more than mere also-rans in Athens.

Yet so far, the sport has not seen any clear evidence that the catwalk crew, not to mention gifted performers like sprinter Mark Lewis-Francis and long jumper Chris Tomlinson, have it in them to make the graduation to Olympian heights.

It's a question which preoccupies British athletics. How to produce the steel which produces the gold? Lottery money may have made athletes' life easier but did the old-time financial struggles somehow produce tougher, hungrier athletes? Or are today's potential Olympians just unfortunate in being constantly judged against an era of exceptional individual champions from Thompson to Coe and from Christie to Edwards.

There's been some fighting talk b e i n g bandied around this week. Lewis-Francis, tipped four years ago by Donovan Bailey to be the 2004 Olympic 100m champion, says he is raring to prove a point to those critics he believes have written him off since his slump in form and confidence last season.

This weekend, the sport could do with seeing this 21-year-old back to his imperious, flowing best. Or Tomlinson not just at last producing the qualifying standard but recording the sort of 8.40m-plus leap which could stamp him as a genuine contender in Athens. Or Fraser and McConnell battling down the home straight in the 400m, threatening the 50sec barrier.

British athletics could do with the pre-Athens boost which a host of impressive performances this weekend could bring. Yet it is the equivalent US event beginning in Sacramento today which needs much more urgently to somehow find a feelgood factor - not easy when the event is taking place less than three hours drive from the BALCO headquarters which lie at the centre of potentially the most damaging drugs scandal the sport has yet seen.

Marion Jones sets off in the 100m heats today still under scrutiny by the US Anti-Doping Agency while her partner

Tim Montgomery, the world 100m record holder, is one of six athletes who are still competing while awaiting hearings on doping charges.

No wonder Craig Masback, the USA federation's chief executive, told his board this week that " nothing is more challenging or dispiriting than the situation in which we find ourselves".

With cynicism suffocating the sport these days, it could get even more dispiriting still on the final road to Athens.