I have no idea what I’m doing this weekend or even what I’m having for my tea this evening, but I am absolutely put-my-mortgage-on-it certain that the two biggest sports stories in this country over the next five and a half years will be how much the 2012 Olympics will cost and how many medals we’re going to win.

I intend to leave the budget shenanigans to my more numerate colleagues - I’m going to stick to the simpler sum of how we find the 50 or so medals we need to meet the British Olympic Association’s target of finishing fourth in the medal table.

And it was with that in mind that I went to Trafalgar Square on Tuesday to witness the launch of Sporting Giants, the latest wheeze from Britain’s sports science community to help us towards our 2012 medals goal.

I say Britain’s sports science community but in truth it seems we had a bit of a skills gap there and have just raided the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) for its best and brightest.

Set up by UK Sport, which distributes Lottery and public money to our elite sportsmen and women, and their partners at the English Institute of Sport, the Sporting Giants initiative is Olympic X Factor for tall people.

If you are between 16 and 25, sporty and are a female of at least 5ft 11in or a male of at least 6ft 3in, then you can apply for testing to see if you have what it takes to make Team GB’s handball, rowing or volleyball teams in 2012.

I know this kind of built-in sizism and model-based match-making goes against the grain of our Corinthian, sport for all, “love the little guy” ideals, but this is elite sport we’re talking about and nobody is imposing a fairground-style restriction on shorter people reaching the top through their own hard work and talent.

And as scheme organiser Chelsea Warr told me, “you don’t find many short rowers and you can’t coach people taller”.

The thinking behind the public appeal - and the other related initiatives UK Sport has launched - is that while the received wisdom states it takes 10,000 hours of training over 10 years to reach the top of your chosen speciality, short cuts are possible.

Basically you get the right people playing the right sport and then you throw the best training, nutrition, medical advice and whatever else is needed these days that our money can buy at them.

Those people can be playing another sport, preferably to a high but not quite high enough level, or just wandering through central London on a wet February morning.

Five and a half years later we have medal-winners in sports you’ve never even seen let alone played and the 2012 Games have witnessed a new sporting superpower take the stage, us.

Simple really. But then if it is that simple, why isn’t everybody else doing it?

That’s the problem. They are.

The massively state-sponsored programmes of the old Soviet Bloc countries wrote the textbooks for systematic talent identification.

The Australians, chastened by their terrible showing at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, cottoned on, skipped the chapters on doping and climbed the rankings.

Peter Shakespear, who rowed for Australia during the 1970s before moving into coaching, has been working for British Rowing for the last five years.

He cut his “talent ID” teeth as part of the AIS’s “Talent Search Program”. This scheme involved going into schools to look for young Aussies with the right stuff for rowing – muscled specimens with broad shoulders, long levers and big lungs.

One of his discoveries was Megan Still, who had been a runner until Shakespear and his team handed her an oar. A few years later, in 1996, she had a gold medal in the coxless pair to her name.

“Montreal was a huge wake-up call for us,” Shakespear told me. “We had got complacent and sport had moved on. The old attitudes and approaches just weren’t good enough any more.

“It’s funny. A lot of the new thinking came from the East Germans. We all know they were cheating now but it sometimes forgotten just how much they got right too.”

Having won only one silver and four bronzes in 1976, the Aussies took home three golds, six silvers and five bronzes from Seoul in 1988. Four years later, they finished 10th in the medal table.

By 1996, Great Britain’s Olympic Waterloo, Australia was seventh in the table. And in the two Games since then, the Australians have finished fourth. Not bad for a nation with a third of the population of Great Britain, which has finished 10th in the table the last two Games.

But it’s not just the Aussies that have used “East German” techniques. The Japanese climbed from 15th in the medal table in Sydney to 5th in Athens four years later by gently steering their sporty types into the disciplines that would suit them best.

The Koreans pulled off much the same trick in the build-up to the Games they hosted in 1988. And it was their example that was most often cited on Tuesday.

British Rowing, if it was being honest, probably isn’t expecting to find too many “sporting giants” capable of levering their way into a boat with medal potential in time for London.

It is one of Team GB’s success stories and is already operating its own fairly systematic talent grab. A few of those they have “rescued” from other sports were present in Trafalgar Square and I can confirm that they were all very tall and broad-shouldered. Anybody joining the programme now from scratch will have their work cut out if they’re thinking about a podium place in London.

But handball and volleyball have real sporting “Popstars” potential.

Quite frankly, we’re fairly rubbish at both at present. The main reason for this, unlike other sports I could mention, is that we don’t really play them.

The Koreans were in much the same situation as we are now in their pre-Games period. As hosts, they too had an “access all events” pass. Problem was they didn’t really have a handball or hockey team.

But showing the determination and self-belief that is probably the main reason the country has dragged itself up from the ruins of civil war in the 1950s to being the world’s 11 largest economy now, they pulled it off. They won a gold and silver in the handball and a silver in the hockey.

Can we do something similar? Maybe. Olympic sport is a moving target so whatever we try we’re going to have to do it well and with real conviction.

I went to the Sporting Giants launch with thoughts of Olympic clowns like Eric the Eel and Eddie the Eagle in my head.

But having spoken to the likes of Shakespear, Warr and numerous strapping examples of perfect sporting geometry, I left Trafalgar Square feeling a lot more optimistic, positive and, well, Australian.

It’s a tall order but I’m backing Britain.