BRITISH Olympic Association Chief Executive Simon Clegg returned home from Athens last week after overseeing Britain's second most successful Olympic performance since the 1924 games in Paris.

Simon, who now lives in Ewshot with his wife Hilary, and children Lucy and Toby, spoke to The Herald about what it was like to be involved in such a massive sporting event.

"In April I publicly set a target for this team to return home with 25 medals in total," he said.

"Obviously I'm delighted that we have come in at the top end of the gold medal bracket and exceeded the total medal tally that I had set."

Before taking on the role of managing Britain's top athletes, Simon was involved with competitive cross-country skiing.

He managed the British biathlon team in 1984 and 1985 before being selected to work for the British Olympic Association.

Appointed as quartermaster for the Calgary winter Olympics in 1988, he was assigned the task of managing the notorious ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

"I couldn't tell you whether he was very bright or less so," Simon laughed.

"But one thing I will never take away from him is the guts it took to go off that 90 metre ski jump."

In Athens, Simon was the overall team manager for the British squad.

He admits it was a demanding position by anyone's standards, and was regularly working 18-hour days during his six-week spell in Greece.

While primarily responsible for handling the logistical side of Britain's participation, Simon also had a great deal of personal contact with the athletes.

He says the importance of maintaining this element to the job was brought home to him in the previous Sydney Olympics, where many of the athletes told him how motivational it had been to see him watching them from the stands.

Asked who he thought were exciting British prospects to emerge during the games, Simon spoke of silver-medal-winning boxing sensation Amir Khan.

"He is a hugely exciting prospect and was a pleasure to manage. He was also a very popular member of the team."

"In terms of the future for him, if we can retain him in the amateur game, there is every chance he will take a gold medal in Beijing."

"He needs to be very careful in the future about how he is managed but he has his feet on the ground and there is no reason why he shouldn't become one of the world's great boxing heroes."

Other exciting British performances Simon talked of were Darren Campbell, Mark Lewis-Francis and the team in the 4 x 100 metres, Kelly Holmes with her double gold medal victories in the 800 and 1500 metres, Kelly Sotherton in the heptathlon and Sarah Ayton and Sarah Webb in the sailing.

With Britain collecting medals in 13 of the 21 sports, there is certainly a breadth of British sporting talent coming through.

Having said this, Simon was keen to stress he is aware of a need for improvement in some areas, particularly hockey, shooting, judo, track athletics and swimming.

"What I have to do is sit down with each and every performance director and analyse the performance of each athlete," he said.

Simon and his team have already begun looking into preparation camps for the next Olympics in Beijing.

He was the driving force behind London's Olympic bid for 2012, competing with New York, Paris, Madrid and Moscow to be selected as the host city.