GB OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS is a biographical list of all the 500-plus athletes who have won an Olympic gold medal representing Great Britain at all Olympics, Summer and Winter, since 1896.

It includes a biography of individual members of teams - football, cricket, water polo, ice hockey etc - who won a gold medal for Team GB and not just as a biography of the 'team'.

Each entry contains the full name and, where possible, the date of birth and death - if applicable - of all athletes, along with the details of all Olympics they competed in, plus an itemised list of all medals they won; gold, silver and bronze.

There is a separate section for those athletes who won gold medals at the Intercalated Olympics at Athens in 1906. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) do not recognise them as official although they gave medals to the winning athletes. We feel the 1906 Games play an important part in Olympic history because, had they not been so well organised following the shambles of Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904, the Olympic movement could well have died barely ten years after it got started.

The IOC may not recognise the 1906 Olympics, as indeed do many purists, but we give them recognition because, let's face it, those 903 athletes from 20 nations who gave there all in quest for glory should not be ignored.

The main biographical section is divided into sports, and in those sports where Britain has not won a gold medal, then their best performances are itemised by sport.

In the early years of the Olympics prior to 1906, when athletes had to be selected by their own IOC for the first time, teams or clubs entered the games En Bloc as representatives of Britain - several of them won gold medals for Great Britain and these teams quire rightly have a chapter dedicated to them.

Despite Britain's many successes they have also produced some fine athletes who took part on the world's greatest stage, but did NOT return home as the Olympic champion that many expected. We take a look at these men and women who some would call failures, but come on, that was only on the Olympic stage, they were far from failures in their normal pursuance of sporting success.

Finally, there is an easy to use A-Z entry of all the 500-plus athletes who have won gold medals for Britain.