大象传媒

Beijing

You knew from the moment he stood by his blocks, seconds before the start of the most hyped 100m in history, and posed like a man messing about in a club with his mates.

It's the Olympic final. You're supposed to be shaking inside, aware that you're about to go through the 10 seconds that could define the rest of your life.

There are 90,000 people staring down at you from all sides of the stadium, billions more watching around the world on television.

, in the most flabbergasted, mouths-agape sense of the word.

I'm just getting my breath back after another special day at the Laoshan velodrome that will stay with me for a very long time

Three medal events, two golds, a silver and two bronze, with as well!

Every rider in the British team to appear on the track so far has managed to win a medal, but leading the way on the first two days of competition has been the unofficial leader of the team, Chris Hoy.

Africa had to wait until day seven of competition to win its of the 2008 Olympics.

The entire continent celebrated as of Ethiopia won the women's 10,000m in the Bird's Nest Stadium, and then, on day eight, there was more glory for Africa to enjoy as Zimbabwe's while setting a new world record in the women's 200m backstroke.

Beijing, Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium

Of all the impressive numbers the Chinese are posting in Beijing, two that the British are most jealous of are 639 and 28.

Those are the number of taking part in these Games and the number of different sports they are competing in...that's 28 out of 28.

OK, as hosts they didn't have any qualification worries but the fact they have more than doubled the size of their team in just two Olympic cycles speaks volumes about their ambitions.

Team GB will struggle to double in size over the same time frame but is determined to contest every event on home soil in 2012, which is why I'm at the venue on "".

Ling Long Pagoda, Beijing

Let's start with the numbers.

She's 19 years old.

This was her first Olympics.

On Monday she became the .

On Saturday she became the first British swimmer to win two golds at the same Games for 100 years (the last was Henry Taylor in 1908).

She is only the third British athlete since World War Two to win two golds at the same Games (the others being Kelly Holmes, 800m/1500m 2004 and Richard Meade, three-day eventing, 1972). [1308 BST UPDATE: And now Chris Hoy keirin/men's sprint, 2008].

Rebecca Adlington won her second gold in the 800m final with a winning margin of more than six seconds - in a new world-record time of 8 minutes 14.1 seconds.

It was a record which had stood for 19 years, the oldest record in the swimming book and she broke it by more than two seconds.

But let's look at some less sexy numbers. The ones that really matter, the real story behind Rebecca Adlington's double gold in the pool.

said it would take a "special ride" to beat the British Sprint Team in Beijing and boy was he right! as the British cycling revolution rolled on.

I was slightly less confident than Hoy at the start of the evening after listening to the French broadcasters next to us talk up their own team's chances. The French had been half a second faster than the British trio (with Ross Edgar instead of Kenny) at the .

But Hoy knew how the team were performing in the run-up to these Games and was less surprised than the rest of the velodrome when they smashed the world's best time in qualifying.

Four years on from dropping out of an Olympic marathon she was clear favourite to win, Radcliffe lines up in on Sunday morning with no-one - not even herself - really knowing how she might perform.

Radcliffe says it's a case of "unfinished business". Unfortunately, after the foot injury, stress fracture and rogue spider bite that have prevented her from racing for the last nine months, her training and preparation are also incomplete.

Imagine a sport crying out for press coverage, a sport with a really great basic format, full of incident and excitement, a sport that used to be one of the most popular to watch on TV.

That sport is , so why therefore have the 'powers that be' made it so complicated? Why can't they stick to one team competition or 'Nations Cup' as it's called and then take the top 25 riders from that, zero their scores and qualify them for the individual a day later? Wouldn't that be simple?

Instead, it took three commentators, two text journalists, a TV executive and an actual rider arguing on and off for two days before we could come to a general consensus on the rules and format of this Olympics show jumping competition - and even then I fear some of us went away with the wrong idea!

It doesn't happen very often that Michael Phelps gets reduced to second place in the headlines, especially after from Munich in 1972.

But was certainly the most astonishing swim I have ever seen from a Briton, and, arguably one of the greatest swims of all time.

To break by over two seconds was immense in itself, but the margin between the 19-year-old from Mansfield and the rest was nothing short of astonishing.

What's more it couldn't have happened to a more popular member of the GB team. This teenager has charisma, is delightfully free of clich茅s and has a winning smile that lights up any sporting event.

It's so hard to describe how it feels as we make the final preparations for Sunday's final.

We have spent the week working on all the aspects of rowing and our racing that we think could possibly give us more boat speed.

We were pleased with , but we know that the final will be on an entirely different level.