Roger Black believes Great Britain will struggle to achieve their target of winning 10 athletics medals at the 2012 Olympics.

This week chief executive of UK Athletics Niels de Vos set the athletics team the ambitious target of claiming 10 medals, six more than the team won at last year's Beijing Olympics.

A British team has not won 10 or more athletics medals at a boycott-free Olympics since Tokyo 1964.

Black won two Olympic silver medals and one bronze during an athletics career that spanned 14 years.

The two silvers came at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where Britain's athletes took home six medals.

He thinks De Vos' target is too ambitious.

"That's a big target. It'll be quite a tough target to get," the 43-year-old said.

"I think we'll do well to get 10 but I think if we got seven or eight we'd be doing very well compared to most Olympics.

"When I won my medal I don't think we got more than five medals there so I think if we got 10 we should be very pleased."

Christine Ohuruogu, Phillips Idowu, Germaine Mason and Natasha Danvers were the only British athletes to come away from Beijing with a medal as the athletics team came up one short of the five-medal target set for them by UK Sport.

Team GB finished fifth in the overall medal table with 47 medals, which served only to further highlight the team's failings in track and field.

Black does see reason for optimism, however, because of Britain's performance in this year's World Championships in Berlin, where the team won six medals, including two gold.

"We have two World Champions in Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu. They are both very talented so they have a good chance in London," Black continued.

"You can never write Christine Ohuruogu off either and there are some young talented athletes coming through as well."

This Saturday will mark 1,000 days until the start of the Games, which will be the first in Britain since 1948.

Black believes the support of the home crowd is the only way that Britain's athletes can reach the 10-medal target.

"Competing on home soil gives you the advantage historically - home nations always do better than usual and if they can use that advantage then 10 medals is not an unrealistic target," he added.

Black added two world championship gold medals to his Olympic tally during his career as a 400-metre runner.

Martyn Rooney was the only Briton to compete in the 400metres in Beijing, where he finished sixth.

Britain's women have enjoyed much more success in the event than their male counterparts, and Christine Ohuruogu and Nicola Sanders are considered genuine medal contenders for 2012.

Black is disappointed that no other male 400m runner has come through to challenge Rooney since Beijing and fears for Britain's chances of success in the event at 2012.

"There's no-one I get excited about at the moment but things happen very quickly," he said.

"I don't think there has been any progression since Beijing. There isn't the strength in depth in the 400 that there was in my day, we used to have people like Iwan Thomas, Mark Richardson and Jamie Baulch behind us."