National performance director Bill Sweetenham on Sunday claimed Britain's swimmers had 'Olympic phobia' after they ended the Games with just two medals.

Expectations were high after eight medals were won at last year's world championships in Barcelona, with Katy Sexton and James Gibson taking gold.

Only Stephen Parry and David Davies reached the podium in Athens however, winning bronze in the 200 metres butterfly and 1500m freestyle respectively.

Former world record holder James Hickman voiced the thoughts of some critics when he admitted the team may have peaked too soon at the Olympic trials, when they responded to Sweetenham's insistence on being in the top 12 in the world to gain selection with a number of British records.

But while Sweetenham insisted the swimmers were as physically well prepared as possible, he conceded they had failed to cope with the mental demands of an Olympics.

"The team was physically as well prepared as any other team but we had Olympic phobia constantly present in our preparations," said the Australian.

"The Olympics are about three competitions. There's the physical competition in the pool, the one with yourself mentally and the other is the environment that no other competition has. To be successful an athlete must win the all three competitions - physical, mental and the environment.

"Medals wise our results here are what should have been expected. I always believed two medals was a realistic achievement and this was generated by knowledge and understanding. Any more than that was uniformed media speculation.

"Our results at this meet include one European Record, three Commonwealth Records, nine British Records, 14 finalists, 19 semi-finalists and two medals. This is three times more than Sydney where we only had five finalists."

Sweetenham took charge after the Sydney Olympics when the team failed to win a single medal for the first time since 1936 and recently signed a contract to take him up to the next Olympics in Beijing.

His uncompromising methods to training have not been universally popular but he warned it will take many more years of the same if Britain is to compete with the likes of Australia and the United States.

And he issued a thinly-veiled threat to anyone who does not subscribe to his methods, particularly the older members of the team.

"The early identification of talent for Beijing is essential if we are to improve," he added. "We need the opportunity to work with a new group of talented athletes rather than work with beliefs and traditions of a senior team who find it impossible to change old habits.

"We need to reverse the psychology of the team. Here we had high expectation of our rookies because they were ranked higher than our experienced Olympians. Next time we need high expectations from experienced, highly ranked athletes.

"Australia took 20 years, from 1980 to 2000, to build its programme and it has great weather, a large budget and lots of facilities all three of which we don't have.

"Rome was not built in a day but it can and will be built. Britain was always on a fast-track with time and other nations with more and better facilities against us.

"Britain, for example, has no outdoor meets because there are no facilities and the weather most of the time wouldn't allow it. If you look at medal winners at these Games nearly all trained in 50m, outdoor pools for at least six to nine months of the year.

"Given that this is the case, we have to train indoors and in 25m pools so therefore the challenge was always going to be greater for us.

"The concept will be the same for Beijing 2008 but the circumstances will clearly be different. Clearly though if it's not done in training it can't be done in competition."

Sweetenham has outlined a detailed plan for elite swimmers and made nine recommendations to further improve standards, including replicating the way Olympic races are scheduled at domestic meetings, increasing the number and standard of facilities and finding more coaches.