Tim Henman may have bowed out of the lawn tennis limelight, passing on the jinxed mantle of Britain’s best player, to Andy Murray. But Tim remains one of the most recognisable sporting personalities in this country. And he never even won Wimbledon. For all his years of tantalising failure, he enjoyed extensive TV coverage and media exposure. There’s nothing our sporting public warms to more, it seems, than a plucky underdog with a tendency always to fall at the last hurdle. As 1966 slips deeper into the collective memory, similar points could be made about the home nations’ football teams in successive World Cup and international competitions. This year’s Euro 2008 tournament in Austria and Switzerland is a stark case in point. It’s a Brit-free zone. You’d be wrong to take your lead from what’s on the TV and conclude that Britons are no good at sport. There’s one discipline in which our national squad stands head and shoulders above the competition - and that’s track cycling. But gener...