麻豆社

Laoshan Velodrome, Beijing

A few days ago I asked the slightly ridiculous question of who is the greatest Olympian of all time.

What prompted me to do so was having seen and .

But "GOATs" are a bit like London buses at the minute: none for ages and then three at once.

Now, I'm not going to suggest - I'll leave that to others.

I'm just going to tell you if there is a humbler, more inspirational, more personable Olympic sporting great out there, I would like to buy that person Beijing's finest steak supper and hear their story too.

As part of her linguistics degree at , Christine Ohuruogu wrote a thesis on swearwords and swearing.

It might have helped her understand some of the words that were coming out of British supporters' mouths when she came storming past Sanya Richards down the home straight on Tuesday night .

What a run. What a final 60 metres. What a 49.62 seconds.

Out with a bang? Or out with a whimper? It was frustrating to watch hopes fade. For all the excitement of the , the men subsided with that draw against Canada - a country better known for their skills on the ice.

And the women's path was . It's hard to shake the feeling that opportunity was knocking.

Ranked eighth and 10th in the world respectively, Britain's men and women will claim with justification to have made progress here in China. They each hope to finish in fifth place, which would be a significant achievement in the wider scheme of things. They are making headway.

A gold medal was sweet reward for Sheffield's after being so disappointed with fourth place in Athens he nearly quit the sport.

But he had to display the most ruthless of tactics to make sure of it.

Four years ago, Goodison saw his medal chance slip through his fingers like a runaway anchor chain in the final minutes of the .

The first 11 reports we have produced at these Games on Beijing's Olympic lessons for London have not involved any tussles with the Chinese authorities. Our luck seems to be running out now.

The police were not happy with us filming near Tiananmen Square the night of the opening ceremony after they had blocked off all the streets. But an officer let us do our job for five minutes and then moved us on.

And, the other day, we were talking to dozens of Chinese people in the middle of a packed street with a camera and nobody asked us to leave. That was interesting because the authorities don't usually like western reporters asking Chinese people questions in public places.

But we have had problems with our latest story.

Ming Tombs Reservoir

You can plan and you can plan, but sometimes Olympic golds are decided by things you simply have no control over.

Britain's former world triathlon champion spent Thursday and Friday watching the contents of his stomach come back past his teeth, at speed. For two days he could hold nothing down - not even water.

He had eaten exactly the same food from the exactly the same places as his four GB team-mates. 18-year-old ; the other three felt fine.

Come race-day here at the reservoir to the north of Beijing, Don was a man swimming and cycling on empty. Avil had already dropped out of her race the day before.

Team GB had kept Don's illness quiet so as not to tip off his rivals that something was wrong.

As it turned out, four years of preparation, 16 years of triathlon, all disappeared down the toilet, right in front of his eyes.

Wukesong Sports Centre, Beijing

USA versus China. The battle at the top of the was distilled on the baseball diamond last night. Not much of a contest you'd think, and you'd be right. , but the scoreline doesn't tell the whole story.

The game had chugged along politely to the fifth inning, with the US 1-0 ahead. China were struggling to get bat on ball, the US making it look like a gentle workout. China have no pedigree in the sport, haven't got the nuances or the etiquette that come with a century or more of obsession with the ball-park.

It was a night of what could have been.

John Whitaker's forced omission from the team could well have .

John was said to be devastated to be sidelined after the appeal went against team GB.

He wanted to ride and had been led to believe that despite his withdrawal yesterday after Peppermill had a sore back, he would be allowed to.

Laoshan Velodrome, Beijing

The is still floating around my head even after a night's sleep.

They have been contenders and medallists at World Championship and Olympic level for around a decade now, but finally pulled off the big one after winning a bronze medal in Sydney and silver in Athens.

To do it in a world-record time of three minutes 53.314 seconds was jaw-droppingly good - it was more than eight second faster than their silver-medal winning time in Athens and just short of five seconds faster than .

But the thing that strikes me is there's every chance Britain will be just as competitive in four years' time.