LONDON — British swimming star Rebecca Adlington has downplayed the medal expectations enveloping home athletes at the London Olympics, saying taking gold wasn't as easy as "picking up a drink".
Adlington claimed bronze in the 400m freestyle on Sunday, failing to defend the title she won in Beijing four years ago, and will now aim to mount a successful defence of the 800m freestyle gold she also captured at the 2008 Games, when the heats for the longer distance start on Thursday.
After the opening weekend of action, Adlington's bronze and Elizabeth Armitstead's silver in the women's cycling road race were Britain's only medal successes in a disappointing start for local fans.
"To be honest, I didn't expect to ever get a gold medal, that wasn't an expectation of mine," Adlington said. "It came from other people," the 23-year-old added.
Britain won 47 medals in Beijing to finish fourth in the 2008 Games medal table and UK Sport -- which invests public funds in performance development -- wants 48 medals from at least 12 sports this time around.
The body has invested £300 million ($475 million, 385 million euros) in Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes in the past four years.
Inevitably, this has led to an intense focus among UK sports fans on the medal count in London but Adlington said the press and public needed to understand just how hard it was to get a place on an Olympic podium.
"Your own goals are very different from what other people expect from you," she said.
"You can only go off what you want to do, your goals and your targets.
"I understand why people (expect gold medals), but they don't know enough about swimming maybe and it has grown so much over the last few years, but no-one wins every race.
"People have said to me 'are you going to get a gold?' like it is easy as picking up a drink.
"Swimming is one of the hardest sports to medal at.
"For myself, it has been extremely difficult, I am not saying it in a negative way, it was just a message of support.
"Everyone at the Olympics will give it 110 percent, whether they are swimmers or not, we can only do our best.
"I am just happy to say I am the third-best in the world, that is unbelievable."
Meanwhile Britain's Hannah Miley, who finished fifth in Saturday's 400m individual medley final at the Aquatics Centre, said she was proud of her performance regardless of anyone else's hopes for her in London.
"Most of the media are expecting me to be depressed and down and in tears," said the 22-year-old Scot, who claimed silver at last year's world championships in Shanghai.
"I know it wasn't the result the public wanted, which was a medal, but that was something they decided to put on themselves to have that expectation of me, Miley added. "My target was to try and give the best performance I could. I gave it 100 percent."
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