He said: "Of course we want lots of gold medals because lots of gold medals means big British moments."

 

But Coe, voted yesterday one of Britain's six favourite Olympians of all-time for his consecutive 1500 metres titles in 1980 and 1984, claimed that they will mean nothing if they do not lead to an upsurge in participation among British youngsters.

 

He said: "One of the great issues that no-one really focuses on is how do you convert a medal into participation?

 

"I would be more interested if people were focussing on the conversion rate of an medal for that sport rather than worrying about how many medals we are going to get.

 

"I think it’s absolutely right that a National Olympic Committee should set an aspiration for fourth place (the British Olympic Association's target for London 2012) but I think we should be less hooked up on number of medals.

 

"Big British moments cannot be suddenly allowed to drop off the radar screen in the way that in 1988 we won the Olympic hockey title but a few years later we were scratching to put a team together."

 

Coe was commenting on a report published earlier this week by global accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) that estimates that Britain will win 28 medals in Beijing, two fewer than Athens in 2004, and that they will finish ninth in the medals table behind Germany, France and Italy.

 

He said: "It’s never quite an exact a science as Pricewaterhouse are trying to make it.

 

"This is all an interesting piece of academic research but I am not sure it adds much to the substance of the argument."

 

John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at PWC and author of the report, admitted that he was not trying to predict individual medallists but that he based his findings a statistical model that took into account historical performance, political and economic factors, as well as a boost that athletes from the home team always seem to get.

 

Coe, though, is growing optimistic that the sport he is most closely associated with is beginning to display the green shoots of recovery.

 

He is encouraged by the success of Britain's male athletes in lifting the European Cup in Annecy last weekend for the first time in eight years and believes that the factors he feels are necessary for success - "a great federation, world-class coaching and hungry motiavted athletes" - are beginning to take shape.

 

Coe said: "I think those things are beginning to happen but they are not going to happen overnight because we are coming from quite a way back."