Great Britain face being beaten by rivals Australia and Germany in the medals table at the London 2012 Olympics unless performances improve from last year’s world championships.

Too many silver medals across all sports has led to a forecast of Team GB finishing sixth in the medal table despite winning more medals overall than in Beijing, when Britain came fourth.

“Based on results in world championships last year we would be in sixth place in the medal table behind Australia and Germany so there is still more work to de done,” British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt said.

“There have been many silver medals and not enough gold – 45 per cent of Australia’s medals were gold, while only 24 per cent of ours.”

Hunt said more sports were now contributing to the medal tally – 13 compared to 11 in Beijing 2008 – and the task now was to focus on making the marginal improvements to turn silver medals into gold, and use home advantage to allow those athletes finishing just outside the medals achieving a place on the podium.

As part of their efforts to boost medal chances, the BOA have launched a campaign called ‘First Games, Home Games’ aiming to prepare the 550 members of Team GB for London.

This includes interviews with 39 Olympians – including Australia’s Ian Thorpe, Dame Kelly Holmes, Sir Matthew Pinsent, Sir Chris Hoy, Jonathan Edwards, Rebecca Adlington, Michael Johnson, and Ed Moses – to provide their experiences and warnings of potential hiccups.

Sir Clive Woodward, the BOA’s deputy chef de mission said: “We are hoping to be the best prepared British team ever.”