The 2016 Olympic Games may be a year away, but the next six weeks will provide a great indicator of just how rich the South African bounty will be. It features world championships in swimming (currently on the go in Kazan, Russia), athletics, and rowing.These are all sports that provided medals in London, so we have a reasonable expectation of winning more in Brazil. The last three years have also seen the emergence of new talent, and we may head into Rio with more cause for optimism than in 2012.Track and field provided only one medal in London, and Beijing's world championships will tell us whether that medal (Caster Semenya) can be repeated, and possibly surpassed.Rowing, which provided one of our great highlights in London 2012, has increased in strength and depth, particularly on the women's side, and will be looking to turn that into multiple medals. It remains, in my opinion, the best example of a centralised, intellectual approach to sport in this country, and I wish that it would be rewarded (resource-wise) accordingly. I've no doubt it would provide multiple medals with better backing, both private and government.Then swimming, usually our main source of medals, has much to anticipate, though hopefully not exclusively from Chad le Clos, who may well go on to be one of the iconic performers of the 2016 Games.His namesake, Chad Ho, recently won gold in the 5km open-water swim, and while this is not an Olympic event (they swim 10km at the Games), his success, like that of Giulio Zorzi, suggests that swimming could once again provide the bulk of our medals.If Cameron van der Burgh can resist Father Time, and the challenge of his rivals, it may even be a record haul. What swimming desperately needs is to find women who can contribute to the total.The three world championships will bring these possibilities more clearly into focus, and hopefully reveal a continuing upward trajectory, rather than worrying plateaus. I know that the advanced Olympic nations such as Australia, Great Britain, USA and New Zealand place great emphasis on these world championships, one year out from the Games. These nations operate on heavily funded four-year Olympic cycles, and that makes the final world championships prior to the Games particularly competitive - everyone is in dress-rehearsal mode.All have worked out that athletes who are not at least in the top eight have very little chance of winning an Olympic medal 12 months later. That's not to say it's impossible (some athletes are injured, for instance), but working the probabilities, any aspirant Olympic medalist must be in that group, and ideally in the top five. There is no specific number, as it varies by event, but I recall that the likelihood of winning an Olympic medal from outside the top eight one year before is in the range of 2%, which is to say, one in 50. If you're a betting man, the world championships will tell you where not to place your money.The corollary is that success now does not guarantee success in the future. Often, the Olympic Games are just a year too late for athletes who are holding on to their late-career peaks and who find themselves that 0.5% off the pace when it counts. The four-year Olympic cycle is perfect for these "so near, yet so far" stories, and so the trajectory of an athlete's career must be factored into the medal projections.You've also probably noticed that many athletes "disappear" between Olympic Games, particularly in that middle year, where there are usually no major titles to win. They reappear now, in this world championship window, making them the litmus test for the next Olympics.Since London, there has been much cause for optimism in these three historically successful sports, and by the end of next month, for everyone with realistic expectations of our Olympic health, that optimism may be validated as the stories, plot lines and characters are revealed...