What chance Bermuda winning an Olympic medal?

Slim.

So slim, that there's more chance Bermuda's still-unfinished National Sports Centre, some 20 years or more in the making, reaches completion before the next Games in 2012.

Both are unthinkable.

As one of the smallest countries competing in one of the world's largest nations, the odds are heavily stacked against us. And that's always been the case.

But 2008 perhaps offers less hope than ever before.

Our five competitors here in the Chinese capital, and another in Hong Kong, will relish the opportunity, enjoy the experience, but realistically can wish for no more than achieving a personal best or setting a new national record.

Four of them - two swimmers and two long jumpers - are here courtesy of wild cards granted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the other two earning their tickets on the basis of impressive performances in the last couple of years.

But on the world's most prestigious sporting stage, it takes something extraordinary, almost unhuman, to earn a place on the podium.

Only one Bermudian has ever savoured such a moment.

Heavyweight boxer Clarence Hill remains the only Islander to have come away with an Olympic medal, taking a bronze at the Montreal Olympics of 1976 - a Games blighted by the absence of several world class athletes through the boycott of 26 countries.

That's not to take anything away from Hill, who had already made his mark in the ring as the star pupil of Pembroke Youth Centre's flourishing fight programme.

At international bouts staged

before sell-out crowds at BAA gym, he'd taken on and beat some of the best in amateur boxing.

In Canada, not only the boycott but a fortunate draw benefited his cause.

He wouldn't have to take on previously unbeaten Cuban Teofilo Stevenson or American John Tate, even if he got to the final.

And to get there he had to fight just three bouts, disposing of Parviz Badpa of Iran with a technical knockout in the second round, winning a decision against Belgium's Rudy Gauwe and, with a painful left arm that he claimed restricted his punching power, finally lost in the semi-final to Romanian Mircea Simon.

But that was sufficient to grab the bronze.

In the 32 years since, Bermuda's athletes have come close but never emulated Hill's accomplishment.

Former world indoor triple jump champion Brian Wellman, once rated among the top three in the world, couldn't produce his best at the Olympics and neither could high jumper Clarance (Nicky) Saunders, a gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games in Auckland, New Zealand in 1990.

Tornado sailors Alan Burland and Chris Nash came desperately close in Los Angeles in 1994 before a heartbreaking mishap in the final race saw a piece of seaweed become entangled in their catamaran's rudder, dropping them down the standings when they looked certain to snatch a medal.

Star sailors Peter Bromby and crew Lee White suffered the same agony in Sydney in 2000, missing a place on the podium by a whisker and having to take fourth - perhaps the most disappointing finish that any competitor has to endure at an Olympics. So close, yet so far.

Bromby and White might again have been Bermuda's best hopes here in Beijing but they failed to qualify in an extraordinarily competitive class, finally shattering an Olympic dream they'd held for some two decades.

Swimmers Kiera Aitken, Roy Allen Burch, long jumpers Aranxta King and Tyrone Smith, triathlon Flora Duffy and equestrienne Jill Terceira will live the same dream over the next two weeks.

But the reality is Bermuda will have to wait until 2012 in London if anybody is to join Clarence Hill on that Olympic roll of honour.