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The man who revolutionised British cycling and brought Olympic and Tour de France success has warned politicians not to cut funding or interfere with the running of sport.
David Brailsford, British Cycling's performance director, oversaw 12 medals, eight of them gold, as well as masterminding Bradley Wiggins' Tour de France victory with Team Sky.
The challenge for the whole of Team GB is to maintain or even improve on their London 2012 performance at the next Olympics in Rio.
Expectations have been raised, and other sports are now trying to follow the example set by the cyclists, and the rowers who delivered nine medals, including four gold.
Mr Brailsford told Sky News that Britain should stick to a winning formula.
"The lottery funding has made a huge difference to the way this country performs. It's well run and well-administrated. It works. What worries me a little bit is that off the back of this, everyone puffs their chests out and starts coming up with different ideas of changing everything, and doing things differently. You'll have different bodies competing with each other to try to run elite sport.
"The bottom line is it works. If we leave it alone and evolve it, it will continue to work. You can't invest the level of money that we're investing in elite sport without getting success. We will definitely get success. The worst thing we could do is react and make changes for change sake.
"So politicians stay out. Keep the money going to sport; keep it going to performance directors."
London 2012 began with an Opening Ceremony in which seven of Britain's Olympic heroes of the past, handed on their torches to the next generation - seven young athletes who are tipped to be the stars of the future.
They then lit the cauldron in the Olympic Stadium. One of them was 18-year-old Katie Kirk, a relay gold medallist in last year's European Championships, and who plans to move up to 800m in time for the next Olympics.
Katie, from Belfast, says the example set by Team GB's medallists has inspired her to work even harder.
"It motivates you to work hard because you know you want to be there and compete at that level. All the medals that have been won so far means so much because you follow their careers, you've seen them progress.
"I remember watching Mo Farah a few years ago and he was running well, but he wasn't as good as he is today. So it just shows that with a lot of hard work you can get to that level."
Katie was chosen by Dame Mary Peters, who was the only British athlete to win gold at the 1972 Munich Games.
Her event, the pentathlon, has since evolved into the heptathlon, which was won by Jessica Ennis. And that's not the only thing that has changed.
"I had one coach who used to squeeze my arm and say 'you've done well, but you can do better'. Now they have physiologists, they have biomechanical people, all sorts of medical back up and physiotherapy, which is very different from in our day.
"If you get youngsters at an early age - in China they start them at three-years-old - you can build them into champions. But not everybody wants to go that route, they want to have a more relaxed and happier lifestyle. But there's nothing happier than how you feel when you stand on the rostrum and hear your national anthem being played."
When Gemma Gibbons won the silver medal in Judo, and her teammate Karina Bryant followed a day later with a bronze medal, it sparked a rush of interest in the sport.
Five thousand people applied to join a club and the sport's website crashed under the weight of numbers.
A week later Gemma was in Hyde Park showing off her medal to awe-struck youngsters who were soon grappling with each other on training mats.
Minority sports need the publicity afforded by medal wins to attract the new recruits who could be the stars of the future.
Andrew Scoular, the chief operating officer for British Judo, told Sky News: "Now that people have seen people win medals at Olympic Games, the aspiration is there. And with the number of people coming through and the growth of the game, we have to identify that talent, nurture it and build it into Rio and beyond."
One day they hope to emulate their counterparts in cycling and rowing who dominate their events.
Gemma said: "I think British judo can be like that. Obviously we have a long way to go, but I think this is probably the first step. If we do it right, say in eight to 12 years' time, we could be like cycling."
