In Medal Count, It's 'Haul' Britannia

Even more encouraging has been Britain's success here in sports that aren't its traditional strengths. That's where Britain needs to make gains in the run-up to 2012.

Louis Smith, 19, won Britain's first Olympic medal (a bronze) in a gymnastics apparatus final, wowing judges with the most difficult routine attempted on the pommel horse.

And British swimmers brought home six medals, including two gold medals claimed by 19-year-old Rebecca Adlington, the first Briton to win swimming gold in 48 years. Promised a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes by the mayor of her home town if she won a gold medal in Beijing, Adlington decided to go for two pairs and crushed Janet Evans's 1989 record in the 800-meter freestyle to do it.

For some back home, the taste of major Olympic success has been an odd contrast from the days when Britain sent the likes of Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards to the Games. Edwards gained fame as the worst ski jumper at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.

"Whatever happened to the British love of heroic but buffoonish failures?" the Guardian newspaper asked in a recent article. "Failure is always more interesting -- and more entertaining -- than success."

Success also is more costly.

Britain is spending at least $18.6 billion to build Olympic venues near the center of London, including a major land redevelopment in the blighted area of east London that organizers call "Europe's largest urban regeneration project."

Beijing reportedly spent more than twice that, $40 billion, to construct the infrastructure and iconic venues that supported its Olympic Games.

Johnson, the London mayor, said he was "dazzled" but not intimidated by the result after touring Beijing's Olympic Green. Despite a far smaller budget and population, Johnson said, Britain would rely on "our native wit, our gift for pageantry and our fantastic ingenuity" to stage an Olympic Games that will be equally impressive.

Nonetheless, many in Britain are skeptical that a quality Olympics can be delivered without the price tag escalating wildly.

But flush with its most impressive medal haul since 1908, nothing sells quite like success in Britain just now.

"They couldn't have any better PR, could they really?" veteran British sportswriter John Wragg said in the Daily Express. "If you come home with 40 or so medals -- 20 of them gold -- people must really feel good about it. And it's not often in Britain that we win things in sports."