Olympics 2008

Britain's Olympic chiefs have a killer statistic they troop out whenever they want to explain a new initiative, silence an awkward question or justify some fresh expense: five of Team GB's gold medals in Athens were won by a total of 0.545 seconds.

The point is simple - the difference between first and second is minuscule so even the smallest potential gain should be explored - and the stat is the Olympic version of a striped football shirt in that it can hide a multitude of sins.

The half-a-second between somewhere and nowhere line got an airing at Bisham Abbey on Wednesday but this time it was difficult to argue with as it was used in relation to Team GB's latest wheezes to win more medals in Beijing.

Basically, it's going to be hot in the city this August, not quite scorchio but very probably muggy and perhaps even sultry.

This kind of "thermal stress" (I'm going to use that the next time the air con goes in the office) is not conducive to tip-top performance, even in the sitting-down sports we're good at.

So it was with this in mind that UK Sport, the body which funds most elite sport in this country, got together with the British Olympic Association (BOA), Olympic Medical Institute and English Institute of Sport to discuss Beijing's "environmental challenges".

A quarter of a million pounds of lottery cash was thrown at the problem and the brightest minds in British sports science were mined.

"With medals won by increasingly small margins (0.545 seconds per bunch of five, by any chance?), we have analysed every factor that can affect the ability of our leading athletes to perform to their potential," said Dr Scott Drawer, UK Sport's research and innovation consultant.

"Every Games location brings with it its own set of special challenges and our job is to equip every sport with a toolkit that will allow them to meet those challenges head on.

"We have consulted experts from the aerospace industry and the military, and have learned a lot from what they have done for troops in various extreme environments."

The biggest headline from all this is that a "hydration strategy" has nothing to do with decanting booze into soft-drink bottles for a lazy day at the cricket. And the second biggest is that despite everything you've read and heard to the contrary, the big issue in Beijing is not pollution, it is old-fashioned heat and humidity.

In terms of potential impact on performance, the boffins believe Beijing's well-publicised pollutants will only account for 1% and tiredness due to travel and jetlag will be responsible for 9%. The rest, a whopping 90%, will be down to being too hot and bothered.

A cynic would say this is another craven example of not wanting to upset the Chinese authorities, who have been a tad touchy on the subject of Beijing's air quality.

And Team GB has got itself into a tangle in recent months about its intention to use anti-pollution masks at the Games. First saying the athletes would wear them, then they wouldn't, then they would, then they could if they wanted to (but not in competition and they didn't really work).

But it would be much fairer to point out that what we heard today rings true with everything the athletes have been saying for some time - the pollution is the same for everybody (and there's nothing we can do about it) but how we deal with the heat and humidity is crucial.

Paula Radcliffe made this point when she spoke to BBC Sport in April and her marathon team-mate Mara Yamauchi backed her up after she ran in a test event in Beijing last month.

It would also be fair to admit the media have latched on to the "sexier" story of athletes running about in masks (which says worrying things about us in the media) and ignored the more prosaic story of how important it is to stay cool and replace fluids lost through sweat.

So let's hear no more about the mask then (not that it was a mask anyway, apparently it was more of a breathing device) and plenty more about clever outfits designed by Adidas, ice vests, pills that help measure your core temperature and sports drinks made especially for the team by Coca-Cola - all excellent ideas which will have an impact on performance.

My colleague James Munro tried the pill today and worked out (kind of) in a heat chamber set up to recreate a Beijing summer, as you can see if you watch his report...

We're also holding a few nuggets back too, as Dr Marco Cardinale, the BOA's head of sports science and research, explained.

"We won't share all of the lessons we've learned because we believe that some of them will continue to deliver us a competitive advantage," he said whilst tapping the side of his nose and winking.

I do have a favourite thermal stress buster, though. Apparently, the British hockey teams will be cooling down at half-time by putting their hands or feet in buckets of icy water.

It's nice to know the old lo-tech tricks of the trade still get a look-in at these sports science extravaganzas, isn't it?