Intro:

The Chinese Olympic swim team settled into their training base in Leeds, northern England on Monday, ahead of London 2012.

The Chinese have high hopes of a substantial medal haul at London 2012, having matched the United States at the last two World Championships, in Rome 2009 and Shanghai 2011.

Script:

The Chinese Olympic swimming team began their preparations for the 2012 London Olympics in Leeds on Monday.

The final members of the team arrived late on Sunday night after flying in from Beijing.

Medal hopefuls including Lu Ying, Li Xuanxu and Chen Qian will be training at the Aquatics Centre at the John Charles Centre for Sport.

It's the first time the team has prepared for an Olympic Games outside China and the chief of the China Swimming team, Yuan Haoran, thinks it'll make a difference.

SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Yuan Haoran:
+++Rough Translation+++
"The Olympic games are very different from any other international tournament. It's very competitive, with a very high performance level. Nobody can ensure 100 per cent success, however as you can see we've put a lot of effort into our preparation. We came to the UK early with the sole purpose of achieving a great performance at the games. We hope that with the training here and the adjustment and the coordination our swimmers will do much better than they did at the last Olympics."

The swimming events begin on July 28th and will dominate the first two weeks of the Olympics.