The 23-year-old has not travelled with the rest of the squad to Beijing after being held back at the team's holding camp in Macau for further treatment on the minor setback.

However, her coach Adrian Stan admitted that, barring a swift recovery, the problem means Tweddle's participation at the Games will now be limited to the team event as well as individual bars and floor.

"She is unlikely to take part in the beam and the vault," Stan said.

The former Chester schoolgirl, who became Britain's first-ever artistic world champion when she took gold on the bars in Aarhus in 2006, has endured a series of injury woes throughout her career.

Tweddle was working her way back from the most recent, an ankle injury sustained last month, before being struck down with this latest setback.

However, she will definitely link up with her team-mates on Monday having only remained in Macau due to the availability of facilities
better suited to aiding her recovery.

Tweddle is one of Britain's most successful ever gymnasts, having won European, Commonwealth and world titles.

UK Athletics Performance Director Dave Collins insists that the nearer the Olympic Games get, the more confident he is Paula Radcliffe will be fit to compete in Beijing.

The 34-year-old had looked destined to miss out on her fourth consecutive Olympics when an MRI scan in May revealed a stress fracture in her left thigh.

However, the marathon world record-holder has defied medical opinion having started running again a number of weeks ago following a period of rehabilitation at her base in the Pyrenees.

Radcliffe will link up with the Team GB squad at their Macau base as she begins the last few steps towards realising her ambition of an Olympic gold, the only gap in a highly-successful athletics career.

While Collins admitted it was a waiting game ahead of the marathon on August 17, he has now begun to entertain the possibility the Bedford runner will be there at the start line.

"I am more optimistic as time goes on," he said.

The Olympic sailing events face possible disruption from violent typhoons, forecasters revealed.

Weather experts predict two or three tropical cyclones - known as typhoons in Asia - will hit the coast of China this month and are likely to affect the sailing venue Qingdao, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Last week Typhoon Fung Wong destroyed 110 houses and forced the evacuations of 390,000 people in the east of China.

Beijing organisers insisted however that the typhoons would be shortlived, lasting one or two days.

Wang Jianjie, deputy director of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, told a news conference in the Chinese capital: "According to our forecasts in August we are likely to have two or three typhoons landing in our coastal areas and that might affect Qingdao, Shanghai and Hong Kong."