Olympics: Torch bearers

Athletics: Carolina Kluft, (Sweden)

There had been talk of Kluft since she took the Heptathlon titles at the World Junior Championships and European Championships in 2002. That year, at only 19, the Swedish public voted her Swede of the year. But nobody was really expecting the splash she would make at the World Championships in Paris last summer.

She took the title scoring 7001 points - the third highest points tally in Heptathlon history.

Competing with a smile on her face that is at odds with her national stereotype, Kluft was awarded the Victoria Scholar, the highest award in Swedish sport for “the very un-Swedish way she has shown us that you really can have fun on the field of competition even though there is so much at stake.”

Kluft was destined to be an athlete, her mother was a long jumper and her father was a footballer. She considers herself more of a jumper than a thrower and her battle with Denise Lewis promises to be intriguing.

At the moment, despite her youth and lack of experience, Kluft is considered favourite with some feeling that Jackie-Joyner-Kersee’s amazing world record of 7291 points set in Seoul could be under threat.

Boxing: Olandier Fonte Solis, (Cuba)

No Olympics would feel right without the Cubans dominating the ring. Despite boycotting two Games since 1984, inspired by the policies of their big, bad neighbour, the small Caribbean island has still amassed 27 Olympic golds, most famously by the great heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson and his successor Felix Savon.

They have six heavyweight titles between them.

Solis is now following in Savon’s career path and is expected to illuminate the ring in Athens. Many experts reckon Solis was unlucky not to travel to Sydney, while still a teenager, in place of Savon after he beat the legend in the national championships.

Savon equalled Stevenson’s record of three consecutive golds at Sydney, and Solis looks to have all the tools to start a new dynasty.

Rippled with muscle, aggression and an unwavering loyalty to Castro, Solis, like all Cuban boxers, receives £20 a month. His expected victory in Athens would yield him a bevy of state-bestowed privileges like a house and a car.

Swimming: Michael Phelps, (USA)

In Sydney, it was the Thorpedo with his size 16 flippers. In the Athens pool, advantage may swing back to the States in the form of Michael Phelps. The 18-year-old has already gained a reputation for cockiness, with his ambition to match Mark Spitz’s 1972 record of seven golds.

After winning four golds and setting five world records at last year’s World Championships in Barcelona, Phelps first mentioned his target.

Ian Thorpe has dismissed equalling Spitz’s achievement as impossible, but such is the confidence of this young American that he has a clause written into his Speedo contract that should he match Spitz in either Athens or Beijing, he will be awarded a $1million bonus.

At the Sydney Olympics, Phelps became the youngest swimmer in 68 years to qualify for the US team and last month, Phelps succeeded Thorpe as FINA’s swimmer of the year.

Unfortunately, as Phelps swims butterfly and medley and Thorpe mainly freestyle, their rivalry will be confined to a medley race. Phelps has stated he will swim seven events in August, but won’t declare his programme until the US trials in July.

Standing at six four, Phelps is under no illusions as to the task he has set himself. Watching him promises to be an exciting experience.

Gymnastics: Svetlana Khorkina, (Russia)

Khorkina became the most high-profile gymnast since the glory days of Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut before the Sydney games.

Of course, she posed topless for Playboy to do it, but Khorkina remains the brightest star in her sport and she may have the starring role in the most heart-warming redemption tale in Athens.

She failed to capture the all-round gold medal needed to validate her greatness last time out after the vault was set three inches too low for her. The circumstances have never been fully explained or the full story told, but it means that the sport’s biggest name has yet to find a place on the pedestal alongside Comaneci and Korbut.

In a sport notorious for denying young girls their childhoods and creating machines rather than athletes, Khorkina is a breath of fresh air. She not only does Playboy centrefolds, but she drinks, smokes and is generally all for enjoying life.

In Gymnastics, she is pretty much a renegade - something the sport could do with. And she is also altering other perceptions.

Whereas Gymnasts were once considered past it at 18, Khorkina is still among the very best at 25, despite her lifestyle. With her looks and regal poise, she will be the neutral’s favourite to take the all-round gold in Athens.

Weightlifting: Pyrros Dimas (Greece). Now should this man be standing on top of the podium in Athens, this may well be the story of the Games in the same way Cathy Freeman was the story of Sydney.

While the Greeks have their own track star in defending 200m champion Konstadinos Kedris, not even he is able to touch the hearts of the Greek public like Dimas.

Weightlifting is as much a national sporting obsession as football in Greece and Dimas is its icon. Born as Piroo Ohima in 1972 in Albania, his tale is one of asylum-seeker turned national hero.

Thirteen years ago Ohima went to Greece on the pretext that he needed surgery. He never returned to his homeland, then still under the rule of Hoxha.

The Greeks embraced him, immediately calling him into the weightlifting Olympic team for Barcelona. Within a year of fleeing as a refugee, Dimas was a national celebrity having won Gold in 92 in the 82.5kg category.

That success was repeated in Atlanta and Sydney, meaning Dimas is going for his fourth straight gold medal at these games.

The Greek government have given Dimas a nominal job as an army sergeant and a salary for the rest of his life on account of his astonishing Olympic success. The script, and Greek public, demands the “Lion of Chimara” caps his career by bringing Athens to its feet.