Boxing clever

Barring miracles in the marathon, underway as I write, I reckon that's it for the medals now - a paltry 19 GOLD (we've got the power to know...), 13 SILVER (my planet's sweet...), 15 BRONZE (don't know any lyrics). Check out all of them.

The last one was, fittingly, another GOLD, which should have cemented 4th place, but those sneaky Germans may pop past - there are a couple of dodgy events left which may provide medals - the Russkies nipped past with Gold in made up events like sync swimming & rhythmic gymnastics...ANYWAY, James Degale wins a cartoon fight, which had everything - biting, wresting, falling over, windmill arms - not a huge amount of boxing, but I blame the Cuban.

Back in the sitty-downy sports, we got another Bronze in the kayaking, Dr Tim doing the biz again. It was very close at the end, could have been any of them, but it was great to see the 3 of them celebrating together.


Meanwhile, controversy reigned at the Taekwondo. Sarah Stevenson was up against the Chinese Olympic Cah,pion, who had never lost, and lost a tight fight 1-0. However, she had landed a head kick so plum in the dying seconds that the Chinese girl had a fat lip. Somehow, it wasn't seen and the Chinese girl went through. We appealed, and, in scenes unprecedented at Taekwondo, won the appeal! So the result was reversed, and Sarah went into a fight for the Gold match. Needless to say, she didn't have enough time from the result being reversed to prepare properly and lost to the eventual Gold winner. She did, however, pull it out of the bag to win the Bronze. Given that she was injured for the last 2 fights, i was waiting & praying for the stork to come out of the locker, but it stayed in.

And as if that wasn't enough controversy, shortly afterwards, another Cuban was disqualified during an injury time out in the Bronze match for taking too long / not hearing that his time was up. Whatever, he was so furious that he gave the ref a kick in the chops, and was promptly bundled off the mat and out of the arena into a life ban! Naughty John Inverdale spent most of his afternoon while watching the abject performance of the athletes (nothing in either relay, and a tin in the 1500m) looking forward to seeing the footage!

And little Tommy Daley bowed out with an excellent performance, finishing 7th in the final. Considering he had a bit of a shocker on his entries throughout, we were left wondering a little bit about what might have been - but now it's on to 2012 for him. The final did allow us to hear the most gratuitous bit of commentary of the games, from Leon Taylor, as the Aussie nailed his final dive to win the only non-Chinese diving Gold:

"I've never seen anything like it. I invented that dive, and he's just perfected it!"


And while we're on the subject of sh1t commentary, Steve Cram & Mista Fosta - hang your heads in shame. you spent most of the race slagging off Sammy Wanjiru, the eventual winner, for going too quickly, but it WORKED! Hold your fire next time, and don't try and get out of it by saying things like "the high risk strategy, that no one thought would pay off, did". Maybe, just maybe, you boys DON'T know it all! Stick to slagging off UK Athletics, who deserve it - as Brendan has just pointed out, not one Brit male in the top 8 of any middle or long distance race for the first time EVAH!