ATLANTA -- Pressure? If Brian Wellman's feeling it, there are no telltale signs.

"So, if I get this gold medal, just how much are Government going to give me,'' laughed the star triple jumper, ribbing Sports Minister Tim Smith at a reception in the Games Village on Thursday night.

Wellman, of course, was referring to the Sports Ministry's incentive scheme instituted shortly before last year's Pan-Am Games under which medallists at the three major festivals -- Olympics, Commonwealth and Pan-Ams -- become eligible for cash rewards.

Yet Bermuda's 27-year-old former World Indoor champion is well aware that anything Government might fork out would be a drop in the ocean compared to what he could earn elsewhere should he indeed find himself atop the medal dais a week from today.

Endorsements and sponsorship deals following an Olympic gold medal would make the Arkansas-based jumper a very rich man, particularly since his event has suddenly been catapulted into new-found prominence.

Thanks for that belong to his friend and rival Jonathan Edwards whose Bob Beaman-like leap at the World Championships last August helped chart new triple jump territory as he became the first man to break the 18-metre (and 60-foot) barrier with a monstrous effort of 18.29.

Wellman remembers it well. He was second on that occasion, snatching silver with a jump of 17.62 which at any other championship would have probably been good enough for gold.

Edwards hasn't been beaten since, embarking on a win streak which has prompted English bookmakers to make him an odds-on favourite to win gold again next week.

But invincible? Far from it, insists Wellman.

"Oh yeah, he's definitely beatable,'' says the Bermudian. "He was beatable last year. You've just got to believe he can be beaten.

"It was the same thing with Michael Johnson. Nobody thought he could be beaten and then Frankie Fredericks comes along and beats him in the 200 just a week after Michael sets the world record.

"Everybody's vulnerable. Obviously there's more mystique when a guy goes on a long win streak. It makes him harder to beat because he has that mental edge.'' While Edwards has stolen Wellman's, and just about every other triple jumper's thunder in the last year, all of them appreciate just what the Englishman has done for the event. As one of the first gold medal field events on the athletic programme and with Edwards going against two in-form Americans, Mike Conley and Kenny Harrison, as well as Wellman, NBC's cameras are likely to be firmly focused on the sand pit come next Saturday evening.

"We're going to love it,'' says Wellman, a sparkle in his eye. "Normally we compete under anonymity. We're over there in the corner jumping by ourselves and they flash the distances up on the board and the crowd say `ok, so and so did this and that', but they're not really watching us.

"But all of a sudden, everybody's watching. They want to see another 18 metre leap, they want another world record. We're going to enjoy every minute of it.'' On paper, Wellman's performances so far in 1996 wouldn't appear to be of gold medal calibre. But the good news is that nobody else, apart from Kenny Harris who recorded a wind-assisted 18.01 at the US trials last month, has got anywhere near to Edwards' mark including the record-holder himself.

And that has much to do with the conditions the jumpers have encountered during their travels on the European Grand Prix circuit.

"It's just been awful,'' explained Wellman. "It was so rainy and cold in Oslo that I didn't jump at all. In Gateshead, Jonathan only jumped 17.05, but again it was wet and cold. And then I won in Lausanne with 16.5 but again it was windy. There have been just a lot of bad situations, not just for me but for everybody.

"Things should be different here in Atlanta. Everything's on course to take care of business.

" I feel I'm peaking. I feel I'm a lot fresher coming into the Olympics than I was going into the World Championships a year ago. Last year I felt I was hanging on. I jumped so much indoors and had so many competitions, by the time I got to the Worlds I was pretty dead.

"Now I feel fresh. I'm mentally and physically ready to go.

"And don't think this is going to be a one-man show. There are a whole host of guys who can go out there next week and light it up. This is the one we've all been waiting for.''