UK Athletics Performance Director Dave Collins is excited by Great Britain's prospects at the Beijing Olympic Games and beyond following a strong return from the World Championships in Osaka.

Collins allayed fears Team GB would arrive home from Japan on the back of their worst performance at a global championship by setting a pre-tournament target of three medals.

His faith in his heavily-criticised squad was repaid as they claimed with five top-three finishes, a stunning 400 metres one-two from Christine Ohuruogu and Nicola Sanders, and bronze for heptathlete Kelly Sotherton and the men's 4x100m and women's 4x400m relay teams.

Collins' target of achieving 14 top-eight finishes was narrowly missed, but a host of lifetime and season's bests have boosted confidence ahead of next year's return to the Far East.

Overall, Britain finished 10th in the medals table - topped by the USA with 26 - and sixth on the placings table.

Collins said: "We are working on a long-term mission to Beijing and through to London and beyond. We are not just looking to perform there, we are looking to make this a high performance sport again.

"It is always nice to have success on the way because it has such a motivating effect on everybody; it serves as a reassurance that the things we are doing are working well."

Britain actually secured 17 final berths in Osaka, while 14 personal bests, 13 season's bests and a national record for the 4x400m women's relay team were also recorded.

Collin added: "The medal target has been exceeded. The target was there to have something to aim at, but what I wanted to see was the process of athletes competing, their attitude of being here and their professionalism to their preparation.

"I felt if we got that right it would be the next step on the road to recovery and I think we have done that, in many cases very well indeed. As a result of that, the medals and the performance will come.

"We haven't achieved the number of fourth-to-eighth-place finishes, but it depends how you look at it.

"If you look across the team to how many people we got into finals, I am not too concerned about the goal as I am about the way we are going and I think on a whole we are going quite well."

Tom Parsons, competing in only his second major championships at 23, and 22-year-old Martyn Barnard reached the high jump final with lifetime best showings, while heptathlete Jessica Ennis took another step towards a major honour after posting a string on personal bests on the way to her highest ever overall total.

But despite the strong showing from a number of Britain's youngsters, Chris Tomlinson, Goldie Sayers and Phillips Idowu failed to live up to pre-tournament expectations.

Tomlinson and Sayers, who have both posted British records this year, failed to progress through their respective long jump and javelin heats, while Idowu managed only a sixth-place finish in the triple jump, 65cm behind the winning leap.

"People have came here and have performed at or above their potential and that is what I want to see, a larger number of people doing that," said Collins.

"The general tone of this has been very positive and exactly what we wanted, people working hard.

"Where people have had disappointments, we want them looking carefully at what they have done and knowing what they need to work on."