My magic moments

These do change a bit, but at the moment they are:

1. Best moments: All of it! In particular,

• the look of blissful happiness & joy on the face of Grainger,
• Mike Costello's commentary on the last few metres of the 5000m - "his face, a mask of pain",
• Andy Murray hugging the random kid after thrashing Fed,
• the radio commentary when Skelton knocked down the penultimate fence - quide liderally as the commentator uttered the word "GOLD",
• the extraordinary drama of that 47 minutes on the middle Saturday,
• Kirani James swapping his number with Oscar Pistorius,
• the old man in Yorkshire who sent the Brownlees congratulatory letters & a tenner each,
• the teenager from Guam who finished 13 minutes back in the 10km open water swim, then got a standing ovation which he couldn't see, as he'd lost his prescription goggles in the Serpentine!

2. Favourite athlete you’d never heard of before: David Rudisha - what a senasational 800m, the athletic performance of the games. Hoping for the 400m match up between him & Bolt!

3. Favourite sportsman/sportswoman - Sportswoman: The lovely Laura Trott - "I'm glad the crowd were roaring me home coz me legs were killing me"

Sportsman: Ben Ainslie for the absolute force of will he imposed on a regatta he was losing to scrape the Gold in the final race. Gargantuan.

4. Favourite performance - Being at Park Live to watch Trott win the Elimination race with the crowd getting into it was pretty special, but the Triathlon was amazing - only saw the last leg but Alistair Brownlee ran at an incredible pace to drop everyone else and get his brother into a medal winning position, even with the 15 second penalty.

5. Favourite medal - Non GB?

• Being pipped in the lightweight 4s by the saffers, who had the first black rower to win a medal in their boat.
• Another good one was the Guatemalan race walker who won their first ever medal, then used the platform as a plea for his nation's youth to stop the violence.
• For schadenfreude, has to be Bauge's silvers - though should have been gold for the amount of whinging!

6. Favourite Team GB medal - Probably Katherine Grainger, but all the cyclists as well!

7. Favourite bit of punditry- Cav in the Velodrome was comedy gold.
"So Cav, can you explain the elimination race to us?"
"Well, it's a race and people get eliminated every few laps"

8. Favourite venue - Greenwich Park & Horseguards - what settings! In the Olympic Park, The Box that Rocks was very cosy as well.

9. Favourite thing you witnessed live & direct (if any) - Finale to the Pentathlon - the roar which greeted Sam Murray when she came into the arena in silver position on the final lap of the Modern Pentathlon - what must it have been like at the stadium!

Also the Korean bloke being tackled at the handball - you had to be there really but it was very funny.

10. Favourite stat (made up or real)-

• Mo ran 50 laps of that track
• Bolt did under 100 seconds of work all week
• Brownlee's 10k was 90 seconds slower than Mo's, and he had slowed to a walk by the end
• The Iranian weightlifter with the same number of letters in his surname as Phelps has Gold medals.

11. Favourite Redgrave Hug - So many! At the rowing, the consoling one for Purchase & Hunter and the celebratory one, on behalf of the nation, for Kath Grainger who barely escaped alive.

Away from the rowing, popping up in the mix zone to hug it out and pass on the mantle to Chris Hoy

12. Face of the Games Ennis & Farah - a superb stick in the eye for the haters!

13. Mathias Steiner Saharan award for Dust -

• Obviously Gemma Gibbons, Tom Daley, Sarah Stevenson for doing what they did with recent and not so recent breavement to contend with.
• Felix Sanchez sobbing his heart out on the podium,
• a red eyed Hoy,
• Pendleton's tears of joy that she was finally finished with the sport she'd been cursed to be so good at.
• And poor old Nick Skelton - too stiff upper lipped himself for dust mind you, but one fence down in 5 rounds, but it was the last one, and the 4 clears didn't count, so he went from Gold to 4th.
• Purchase & Hunter

14. Your dustiest moments -

• That incredible torch-lighting
• The boys in the 470 capsizing in celebration as they got silver, then jumping in to celebrate with the Aussie winners, while both sets of parents hugged on the headland
• Walking into Olympic Park for the first & only time, and hearing a huge roar go up from the stadium - turned out a Brit had qualified for the discus final!
• The commentary highlight reels, especially after the event!

15. Derek Redmond Limping award for Bravery -

• Merve Aydin, the Turkish 800m runner, who limped around to finish on a sprained ankle.
• I suppose the American - but I don't believe he had a properly broken leg!
• Steiner himself for dropping the weights on himself when going for the big one.

16. One to watch in 2016 - Laura Trott in the cycling, Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the heptahlon

17. Best Celebration -

• Hard to argue with Jade Jones flinging her head protector in the air when she won Gold.
• Also liked the sailing boys,
• Daley getting thrown in,
• Bolt doing the Mobot,
• the hurdling discus champion,
• the canoeists all jumping in,
• "we're going to be on a stamp"
• Gold Postboxes
• ...

18. Best quote: "Thanks Dad" - 5Live had a reporter with Pa Hoy, and they got him talking to Chris. He was so proud, and Chris's simple reply was just the bollocks. Fantastic - instant tears from Dads across the land!

19. Villain -

• That cock of a Tory MP who tweeted his dislike of the opening ceremony because it was too multicultural,
• Pedantic rules appliers - rules are rules and all that, but read the script first guys!
• David Bond for his relentless negativity in the first few days.
• KP for his attention-seeking idiocy!