Chris Tomlinson is getting married this week but there will be no time in his hectic schedule for a honeymoon.

Britain's No1 long jumper is at the start of an athletics season he hopes will climax with an Olympic medal while his long-term fiancee is treading the boards in the West End as leading lady in the musical Buddy Holly.

Before wedding Italian-born actress Lucia Rovardi, Tomlinson will put in a morning's training at the Parliament Hill athletics track, a short distance from the couple's north London flat in Hampstead.

"My coach is tapering my training programme around the wedding," he said. "I will be training on my wedding day but we will still have a nice time. There'll be no honeymoon as such."

This has been a breakthrough year for the 6ft 6in Teessider, who has got "a monkey off my back" by winning a medal in a major championship.

He helped Britain to fourth place in the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, pipped by a mere two centimetres to the gold medal by South African Godfrey Khotso Mokoena.

Last year, he set a personal best of 8.29metres to better the British record he set six years ago when he exceeded the previous best, set in 1964 by Olympic champion Lynn Davies. Tomlinson came fifth at the Athens Olympics but flopped badly at the world championships in Osaka, failing even to make the final.

Then came his exploits in Valencia, although they were overshadowed by Dwain Chambers's controversial return to the fold and Phillips Idowu winning triple jump gold.

"It was like a monkey on my back and I managed to get it off," said Tomlinson of his world silver. "Before that I went to a lot of championships and showed promise and now it has really clicked in a big way. I used to wake up in the night and wonder if I would ever do it and now I have it fills me with a lot of confidence. I'll be aiming for a medal in Beijing but I'm not one to make bold predictions. The season has been pretty decent so far and I beat my previous record indoors."

The field in Valencia was particularly weak, missing Italian Andrew Howe and Panamanian Irving Saladino, who won the world championship final in 2007 by jumping 8.57m.

Tomlinson knows he will have to beat his personal best by 10 centimetres and jump a minimum 8.40m to improve on Athens and win a medal.

He said: "There's an out-and-out favourite in Saladino, who regularly jumps 8.40m to 8.50m but behind that I wouldn't say any one athlete is better than anyone else at this stage." As part of his bid to close the gap, Tomlinson is working on his sprints with Lloyd Cowan's group of speed merchants at the Lea Valley Athletics Centre at Enfield.

Going head-to-head with outstanding British sprinter Simeon Williamson, the long jumper is aiming for 6.7secs over 60m before Beijing.

Tomlinson is under the tuition of Peter Stanley, who coached Jonathan Edwards, the former Olympic triple jump champion. But Edwards is cautious about Tomlinson's prospects.

He said: "Valencia was a big breakthrough for him. On the negative side, he won it in a very poor competition. Probably he thinks he missed a chance to win a gold medal. If he is looking at a medal in Beijing he has to jump 30 centimetres further as we've already got four or five people jumping over 8.30m.

"Chris is going to have to step up for a medal; realistically he is going to make top eight. He has to exercise the demons of Osaka, where he came in as British record holder and didn't even make the final. It's going to be tough for him this time."

But if Tomlinson confounds those predictions and returns from Beijing with a medal no doubt his new wife would think it Buddy brilliant.

• Tomlinson was at the launch of Lloyds TSB's "Local Heroes" scheme with SportsAid to promote 2012 talent.