Marlon Devonish is confident Great Britain will retain their Olympic Games title in Beijing next year after landing a second consecutive World Championships bronze medal with a team competing in only their second race as a quartet.

Christian Malcolm, Craig Pickering, Devonish and Mark Lewis-Francis clocked the third fastest time in British history to finish behind USA and Jamaica in 37.90 seconds - only the fourth sub-38 second time on record.

While USA, powered by double sprint champion Tyson Gay, and an Asafa Powell inspired Jamaica, have speed in reserve, Devonish insists the 0.12secs which separated the top three can be nullified through continuing the hard work under Russian relay coach Michael Khmel.

The Great Britain team have always insisted their baton skills ranks among the best in the world, a deciding factor in Devonish's mind that will ensure he and his team-mates will prove the triumph in Athens was not a fluke.

"We will be most defiantly looking to defend the title in Beijing, I don't want to give it to anybody," Devonish said.

"We are championship performers, we do that year after year after year. It is safe to say we are one of the best teams in the world.

"Our changeovers must be one of the best in the world. The Americans and Jamaicans can run sub-10s individually, but our baton changes allow us to run the times that we do.

"The USA don't have the same baton skills as us because their team changes year after year. That is a luxury of not having too much talent available because we can work again and again.

"This is not one year of practice, this is several years work to set ourselves up and it is the same athletes coming back because we don't have the luxury of having 20 sub-10 guys. That is our advantage and that is why we deliver so well."

The Great Britain team equalled their performance of two years ago in Helsinki, with 20-year-old Pickering coming in to replace the retired Jason Gardener.

While Devonish and Lewis-Francis are the only remaining members of the Olympic champions remaining after Darren Campbell also retired, hopes are high of continued success and ever improving success.

"We can defiantly defend our title next year, we have a young exciting team and everyone is keen," added Lewis-Francis.

"For this year that was the best we could have done, I don't think we could have perfected that anymore. Individually we can run a little bit better and we have one more relay to run this year in Zurich next week and hopefully we can do well.

"As a sprint group and as individual sprinters we have done our county proud and we have given Britain a bit of hope ahead of the Olympics."

The USA landed gold at the Nagai Stadium in 37.78secs, which is just outside the British record 37.73secs set by Gardener, Campbell, Devonish and Dwain Chambers at the World Championships in Seville in 1999.

But the British quartet have 19-year-old European junior 200m gold medallist Alex Nelson, 25-year-old Woodford Green sprinter Tyrone Edgar and Dwayne Grant - ruled out of the trip to the Far East through injury - in reserve and there is belief that the British record could fall in the near future.

"The British record is attainable without a doubt. I plan to run quicker, Mark is back in shape, Christian has had a strange season but he has came back to get a medal and Craig is a new hope coming through," added Devonish.

"There is also a crop of athletes coming through afterwards so as long as we get well drilled and work hard on the relay, there is every chance of getting medals, running quicker and a British record in the future."

Lewis-Francis added: "The British record is definitely there for the taking. This is only the second time we have run together."