MUMBAI: With the 2012 London Olympic Games drawing ever closer, many British athletes will embark on the long journey towards fulfilling their ultimate goal of winning gold in front of a home crowd.

Olympic Dreams is the new BBC Two documentary series which will follow the fortunes of our rising British stars as they endure the hopes and heartaches, troubles and triumphs on the road to London 2012.

Each 45-minute episode will join British hopefuls on their epic quests to win gold including heptathlete Jess Ennis; the elite Coxless Four rowing team of Alex Partridge, Peter Reed, Andy Triggs-Hodge and Steve Williams; gymnasts Lizzie Beddoe, Jessica Hogg and Venus Romaeo; table tennis players Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight; BMX champion Shanaze Reade; cyclist Ben Swift; diver Tom Daley and Paralympic Dressage Champion Lee Pearson.

The series offers an intimate insight into the British athletes' gruelling training schedules, daily sacrifices, highs of victory, lows of defeat, and the pressure of coping under the weight of growing expectation. With such strong competition not every athlete will make the grade and they must face many rounds of selection and competition to be the best.

On their journey the athletes struggle to overcome a variety of obstacles, ranging from lack of training facilities, nerves, injury and teenage hormones in order to succeed. A second installment of the series will air next year.

In the intervening 12 months, fans can follow the journey of these athletes via BBC Sport's Olympics website – bbc.co.uk/olympics – through a combination of news, reports, video clips and regular diary entries.