British gymnastics hopes turned on their head as Tweddle & Co struggle

Uneven performance: Beth Tweddle performs in qualification yesterday, but was disappointed with her display

The only time the British usually make a mark in the Olympic gymnastics arena is when one of the competitors lands on their backside with an almighty thump.

Over the years, tiny elves from the Soviet Bloc and America have tiptoed weightlessly along beams and flown through the air with gravity-defying splendour while our lot have plodded around looking as if they mislaid a note excusing them from P.E. class.

In the entire history of the Olympics, British gymnasts have won three medals - none of them gold - and those rare accolades were minted way back in 1908, 1912 and 1928.

At every Olympiad since then, Britain has gamely packed off a team and returned with nothing except friction burns and duty free. It's a staggering catalogue of failure. In recent years the suggestion that any British women looked impressive on the uneven bars was more likely to conjure up an image of a Vicky Pollard clone waving a Bacardi Breezer in the air than acrobatic excellence.

Beth Tweddle changed all that. When she became Britain's first world champion in 2006, winning gold on the asymmetric bars, decades of under-achievement were banished.

But there was a familiar feeling of anti-climax here as the women's team again failed when it mattered most, missing out on their bid to make the finals for the first time and telling tales of what might have been.

A sixth place at the world championships last year prompted optimistic talk that Tweddle and Co were the 'best ever', even if history tells us that is not saying a great deal.

But wishful predictions of a medal in the team event disappeared as they finished a disappointing ninth, edged out of the crucial eighth place by France.

Tweddle, hampered by a rib injury, eventually declared herself 'fully fit for the floor and bars, but not the vault and pommel horse', somewhat redefining the meaning of the phrase 'fully fit'.

Stretching expectation: Tweddle warms up in the Beijing arena

Halfway through the qualifying competition she was in tears as her hopes seemed in danger of unravelling. Tweddle had a nervy five-hour wait to see if she would scrape through. She made it on the uneven bars, but missed out on a hoped-for place in the floor medal contest.

She admitted: 'My routines were not the best. I could have given up at the start but that would not have been fair on the team'.

British champion Becky Downie, Marissa King, Hannah Whelan, Imogen Cairns and Rebecca Wingin did not make up for her partial absence.

'There was more in the tank and they never released it,' said Britain's head coach Colin Still. 'They produced maybe 10 per cent less than in training. I think nerves got to them.'

Downie also reached the all-around individual final with a 24th place, still enough to make it a British 'best'. To exit on a whimper would be a shame for Tweddle in what is certain to be her last Olympics.

At 23 she is a 'veteran' in a sport that prizes youth like no other. That chase for adolescent dexterity dragged first-placed China into an under-age row.

American media outlets alleged that half the Chinese team are below the minimum entry limit of 16 and He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin might be as young as 14.

The Chinese, already accused of brutality in developing their prospects, produced passports that showed otherwise and the IOC said they accepted them as valid.

China and America will battle for team gold. Britain's women need to raise the bar. Again.