Teenager Jordan Lipton trains for 26 hours a week in gymnastics as she prepares for London's 2012 Olympic Games, the first on home turf in more than 60 years.

Lipton fears stiff competition but, like many, believes British athletes will benefit from the home advantage.

"When the competition is here it will be amazing," the 14-year old Scot, who has trained since the age of five, told Reuters.

"The Americans and Chinese always win everything in gymnastics so I am determined to prove that British gymnastics are as good."

Being the host nation in 2012 means the British Olympic squad will be two or three times larger than usual and extra funding has been pledged for athletes.

"Virtually every city that stages the Games sees a good boost for their home team and in the Olympics that follows," London mayor Ken Livingstone, who pushed for the capital to host the Games, told reporters at an Olympic media briefing last week.

The host government will pour around 600 million pounds (US$1.20 billion) -- to come from the treasury and National Lottery -- into preparing London and British sports for the Olympics between now and 2012.

AMBITIOUS GOAL

Britain was aiming for fourth or fifth place in the medals table, Livingstone said, after China, the United States, Russia and possibly Australia.

Such an ambitious goal -- the British team ranked 10th in Athens in 2004 in their best performance in seven summer Olympics -- could be made possible by home advantage.

The advantages of competing on familiar territory have often been a factor in the soccer World Cup where host-country winners include England in 1966, West Germany in 1974, Argentina four years later and France in 1998.

"We are competing here on country soil, with partisan spectators. This will be the highest performance levels for a generation," British Olympic Association (BOA) chief executive Simon Clegg told Reuters.

London first held the Olympics in 1908, when Britain topped the medals table. On the second occasion, in 1948, they came twelfth.

The Greek team gave their best performance in more than a century when their country hosted the 2004 Games in Athens, walking away in 15th place. In the first modern Olympics, held in 1896 also in Athens, Greece came second only to the United States.

"There is even greater levels of expectation by virtue of being a host nation. It is absolutely right and proper to aim as high as we can," Clegg said.

MOTIVATION PROBLEM

Some, however, fear that not enough money or interest is injected into British sports and question the Olympics' ability to change this.

"Britain should have a slight home advantage in various ways but only if the government and media get totally behind our representatives," gymnast Lipton's coach Claire Starkey said.

"One medal at the Olympics for China is worth two million dollars, one medal for GB is worth a pat on the back."

Motivating young athletes in Britain remained a problem, Starkey said, and several sports got waylaid by clumsy medical processes and money lost in red tape.

"Fourth place for Britain very much depends on taking a more radical approach," British Gymnastics' technical women's director Adrian Stan said, referring to the need for money.

Lipton, who excels on bars and beam, eschews such worries.

"My dream is to stand on the podium at the London Olympics and listen to our anthem," she said. "I'll probably cry and I can't sing".