China's fireworks and child singers may have been faked, but I'm hoping those all-important medals aren't made of chocolate. It's been quite an incredible weekend for "Team GB", hasn't it? While I'm not a very sporty person, I'm a very patriotic one. To see Great Britain at third place in the overall Olympic medal rankings (behind China and USA) is a startling sight for a nation used to dignified failure...
Anyway, China has a population of 1.2 billion potential athletes to choose from. The USA have 300 million could-be Olympians. In comparison, there are just 60 million Britons in the world. Therefore, we're punching well above our weight in Beijing -- particularly because (unlike, say, America or Australia) our government's never put much cash or energy into athletics or sports to nurture talent. Thankfully, that's slowly changing thanks to National Lottery cash and the impetus of London 2012 -- a fact reflected in Beijing's turnaround in fortunes.
Congratulations to all of Team GB for their sterling efforts, particularly those who managed to grab a medal for Queen & Country -- like swimmer Rebecca Adlington (above), who now has the 800m freestyle World Record! Let's hope we can keep it up for the final week.
