2008 Olympics Updates

Having competed at the last five Paralympic Games it will be a new experience for me to be a spectator in Beijing. However, as a commentator I will still be close to the action and be able to speak to the team each day.

Trying to pick out ones to watch from the incredibly strong British swimming team is difficult.

Just to qualify onto the team you had to be ranked at least sixth in the world and it is a team that topped the medal table at the 2006 IPC World Championships.

There will be some familiar faces in Beijing who seem sure to medal – swimmers such as Sascha Kindred, Nyree Lewis, David Roberts, Jim Anderson and Natalie Jones.

However 45% of the team are first time Paralympians and they are likely to be in the mix too.

The GB swimming team have maintained their success for the same reasons cycling and sailing were so successful at the Olympics – funding, planning, attention to detail and focused athletes and staff.

Since the release of National Lottery funding to cover more than just capital projects, British Swimming has been able to invest in the development of talented athletes.

Simply throwing money at something will only get you so far. Team members like current head coach Lars Humer focus on getting all of the detail right all of the time and this doesn’t happen by chance.

There will already be a four-year plan in place to move the team on far beyond Beijing.

As with most sports, the athletes put in all the hard work required to get into physical shape but here there is a real sense of team in the broader sense.

Each component of the support team from strength and conditioning to sports psychology, from sports science to the office admin support, everyone is focused and passionate about helping the swimmers be the best they can be.

However, the British team will not have it all their own way. Ukraine has a very strong team of predominantly visually-impaired swimmers and, with stars like Erin Popovich and Jessica Long, the USA will accumulate a substantial medal haul.

Few swimmers will be as dominant as South Africa’s Natalie Du Toit in the women’s S9 events and of course there will be a very strong team representing the host nation China.

There are a couple of races that I am particularly looking forward to.

The Men’s 34-point freestyle relay is always very exciting and although GB won gold in both Sydney and Athens they are likely to be pushed very hard by Australia, with Matt Cowdrey leading the charge.

However, my pick for the entire competition would be the Men’s S8 400m freestyle which will be on 12 September.

It will feature Britain’s Sam Hynd, who is the world record holder for the event and, despite it being his first Games, he will be favourite.

He will face one of the most talented swimmers in the world Xiaofu Wang who will have the home crowd behind him. It is sure to be an exciting contest.

Just a small part of me is envious of this year’s Paralympic swimmers. To race in such a beautiful pool like the Water Cube will be an incredible experience for them.

Thankfully, the larger part of me has come to terms with the fact that my time as an athlete has been and gone and now I can just enjoy commentating on their endeavours.

Andy Hodge has a neat way of summing his next mission up. “It’s all about building on this,” he says pointing to his pocket. In it is his first Olympic gold medal.

Hodge isn’t just talking about a plan to aim to repeat the feats of the Great Britain coxless four in London in four years’ time. He’s also alluding to the plans the wider rowing world has in place to build on the success of Beijing. But more of that later.

Many of the rest of the 23 British rowers who came back from Beijing with medals have got some thinking to do over the next few months. Do they want to go through another punishing four years to compete in front of a home crowd in 2012?

Hodge’s crew-mate Steve Williams is clearly already sick of answering the question, saying: “For me now is the time to put the feet up, recharge the batteries and enjoy the moment. The answer will come to me.”

Williams was the only rower to fly home from Beijing business class as a double Olympic gold-medallist, he is 32 and admits he considered retiring four years ago so the fact his decision is still up in the air is a bit of a shock.

Asked if he has achieved everything he wants to, he replies: “That will be the question that makes up my mind and I’m not really thinking about it at the moment.”

Katherine Grainger clearly hasn’t achieved what she wanted to. When the request comes for photographs of the GB medallists at their post-Games media day, she smiles ruefully at a crew-mate.

The mission of the women’s quadruple scull was to win Great Britain’s first women’s rowing gold. Their tears and exhaustion on the podium as they accepted silver told the whole story.

“There’s still disappointment and that won’t go away. There’s always a bit of a what-if about it,” she tells me.

With two silvers already to her name, there was an assumption that Grainger’s third Olympics would be her last but she explains: “You need perspective and distance. Everyone wants to go to the Olympics and if you could do 10 more you would because it’s so special just to be there.

“But for what it would take for 2012, it’s about what I would feel like on a wet, wintry morning in December.

“If the passion and desire is still there then of course it’s possible but a rather large and enjoyable holiday must come first.

“You need the physical break but you need the mental and emotional break more than anything else and then you can see more clearly which way to go.”

My barely-informed hunch – after a three-minute chat with Kath – is that she will be back for more (although she is clearly a good way from making her mind up) while Williams will decide to spend more time building a career as a motivational speaker.

Also from the quad, Debbie Flood will become a fully qualified prison officerr in the next few months while Frances Houghton – a former crew-mate of Rebecca Romero – plans to do some cycling, “but only between vineyards”.

Matt Langridge, silver medallist in the men’s eight, is still suffering shell-shock after the Games (and the week of partying in the Olympic Village that followed).

“We’ve had weeks of being told what to do, when to eat, when to go to bed. Now we can do what we want,” he says.

Men’s head coach Jurgen Grobler expects the squad to give him some sort of idea about what they want to do by mid-October, still more than six months before the first international event of the 2009 season.

Meanwhile, GB Rowing performance director David Tanner – a man so meticulous he visited Shunyi six times before the Games to make sure everything was in place – is already thinking about the new faces the squad will need for 2012.

“We need to accept some retirements. I think the biggest challenge is to blood some new rowers,” he tells me.

“By 2010 we need to have the 2012 team. There will be some new faces and that’s the biggest challenge.

“There will be some changes – I hope there will be changes. Nobody had heard of Tom Lucy in the men’s eight until a year ago. Zac Purchase was a junior in 2004.”

Purchase – gold medallist in the lightweight double scull in Beijing – is likely to be one of the faces of 2012 and he has high hopes of British success in the rowing regatta.

But the effects of his success are already being felt at grass-roots level. The club where he learned to row, in Upton-on-Severn, Worcestershire, is reporting that all of their summer sculling courses are full.

Hodge, meanwhile, will spend next season as captain of Molesey Boat Club in Surrey, a club that also provided his crew-mate Tom James and Acer Nethercott, cox of the eight, to the GB squad.

Two of the programmes he is particularly keen on getting more involved in are the Sporting Giants initiative and World Class Start – both designed to identify potential Olympians based on their size and to fast-track them into the national squad.

Rowing clubs around the country will be braced for an influx of wannabe Hodges and potential Purchases but while those novices take to the water for the first time, the current crop of stars will be taking a well-earned break.

Now we can stop holding our collective breaths, the longest swimming programme in Olympic Games history has ended and there was drama and incident from the first event, the men’s 400 metres Individual Medley, to the last the men’s 10k Open Water race.

What has pleased me most is that people who wouldn’t normally cross the road to watch a swimming event have become enthralled by something that captured my attention 15 years ago at the European Championships in Sheffield.

The talk in the BBC office was all about Phelps and Adlington, how to pronounce Cavic and how do they swim that fast over 10 kilometres?

The international highlight, by some distance, was Michael Phelps.

Eight golds, seven world records, but people will be talking about that finish to the 100 metres butterfly for many years to come. Did he really overtake the Serbian on the last stroke, and why has the underwater shot of the finish mysteriously ‘disappeared’?

Well it’s not available to the BBC anyway. It doesn’t quite rival the JFK conspiracies, but it will be a topic of conversation in Belgrade and Baltimore on many cold winter nights over the next few years.

It shouldn’t however mask the amazing achievement by the 23-year-old and there are more record-breaking feats in store for us to watch, and him to do, in London four years from now.

Sorry Michael, but you don’t get the accolade for the best individual performance in a race. Call me jingoistic if you like, but Rebecca Adlington’s domination of the field in the 800 metres freestyle final will live long in my memory and those of everyone who witnessed it.

To beat the field by more than six seconds, and to break Janet Evans’ stubborn 19-year-old record by more than two, was a staggering achievement.

Britain has, at long last, unearthed a genuine swimming superstar, the like of whom we have not seen since David Wilkie in the 1970’s. Her finish in the 400 freestyle was breathtaking enough, but five days later she eclipsed that many times over.

It’s a shame that the 1500 is not in the Olympic programme for women. I believe the 19-year-old from Mansfield would be capable of winning that along with her other golden events.

And, for good measure, she could anchor the 4×200 metres freestyle relay team to victory in 2012 as well.

The title of Dame Rebecca might be a bit premature, (does it really sit properly with a young woman not yet into her 20’s?), but her achievements should be recognised properly and not just with the renaming of the local baths.

Jo Jackson has been rather overlooked because of Adlington’s greatness, but her bronze medal in the 400 metres freestyle was just reward for one of the most hard-working of swimmers in the British team.

Unlike Becky she was not blessed with a graceful stroke, but brute force and determination has taken her a long way and will give her the confidence to go a step or two further

The men’s team, on the whole, relays excepted, was disappointing. There were a few bonuses – Michael Rock making the final of the 200 metres butterfly and Robbie Renwick taking his chance as a first reserve for the semi-finals to make the last eight in the 200 freestyle.

Gregor Tait’s Olympic swansong saw him make a final in the 200 backstroke, for the second time, but despite a British record, Liam Tancock was unable to underline his genuine world class in the 100 back.

The Open Water was a fantastic addition to the Olympic programme, and not because Britain picked up half of the medals.

Keri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten were just reeled in by Larissa Lichen to deny a British one-two in the women’s 10km, and David Davies had nothing left to give, in being overhauled by Marten van deer Widen in the last 100 metres of the men’s race.

They were both absolutely stunning finishes.

Six medals, 21 finalists in the pool, British records galore, a few European and Commonwealth ones thrown in for good measure, don’t call British swimmers under-achievers any more.

That coat simply doesn’t fit now.

Laoshan BMX track, Beijing

This could be the first thing Chris Hoy has got wrong in months.

Before coming to Beijing, he said that if he had to put his mortgage on anyone winning gold out here, he’d go for Shanaze Reade.

The track legend doesn’t have to worry about losing his home – His Royal Hoyness can probably take his pick of Scotland’s castles and palaces right now – but he might have a job to do with Shanaze later on.

The 19-year-old from Crewe, who hadn’t lost a BMX final for three years before this morning, was distraught after wiping out on the last corner and seeing her medal chances disappear in a faceful of yellow dirt.

“I’m so cut up and hurt,” she said afterwards, a blank look of shock on her face and a dark bloodstain spreading through the white fabric of her GB jersey around her elbow.

“I’ve hurt my back, I’m all cut up on my arm, I think I’ve done something to my hand, I’ve hurt my sciatic nerve and I’ve cut my shoulder up.”

After a monstrous crash in the first leg of her semi-final, Reade had fought back brilliantly in the next two races to take her place on the start-line for the medal race.

When the gate dropped in the final, she thrashed down the ramp and away, holding a lead of a bike-length going into the first berm.

It was here that she made the key mistake, riding too high around the banked curve and allowing France’s Anna-Caroline Chausson to steal up her inside and into the lead.

For three straights Chausson held a slight advantage, with Reade closing all the time – until the very last turn, when the Briton went for a desperate lunge up the inside, clipped Chausson’s rear wheel and slammed into the baked earth. In that moment, her Olympic dream was over.

Afterwards the adrenaline keeping the pain at bay, she was unrepentant about her last-gasp gamble.

“Why settle for silver?” she said. “I put absolutely everything into this, my heart and my soul, everything since the age of 10.

“You don’t train as hard as I do for silver. It’s about the gold or nothing.”

In truth, Reade’s problems had their roots in an earlier gamble, right at the start of the morning’s action.

Despite warnings from her coaches, she had decided that she would try to clear the third set of jumps on the course in one flying leap. If it came off, it would give her a huge advantage that would almost certainly be enough to win her the race.

Chris Boardman’s view was simple – it wasn’t something Shanaze needed to do. With her catapult start, massive strength and whirlwind cadence, she was already the clear favourite.

While she was the only rider in the field who would even consider the jump, it carried huge risks. If she misjudged the landing, she would almost certainly end up face down in the mud.

Reade decided to back herself, with disastrous results. Leading by a big chunk in that first heat, she cleared the jumps at too great a pace, flipped off the bike and landed heavily on her hip and shoulder.

She staggered to her feet, remounted and rode to the line, but the damage had been done, both to her body and confidence.

“They say you learn the hard way, and I guess I have,” she said later, on her way to hospital for X-rays.

“But a true athlete and a true winner always comes back stronger, and I’m going to turn it round and show everyone what I’m made of.”

Reade’s distress apart, BMX’s Olympic bow was a spectacular success.

Track fans and Hoy might still mourn the loss of the kilo, but its replacement offered an atmosphere unique to these Games.

At no other venue has the PA blasted out the unmistakable sound of Brian Johnson screeching “For Those About To Rock” moments before an Olympic final, nor seen pompom-waving cheerleaders invade the track for some high-kicking high-jinks within seconds of the competitors zooming past.

“BAAYYY-JEEENGG!” the stadium announcer kept roaring. “BAAYYY-JEEENGG CHINA! MAKE SOME NOISE! I CAN’T HEAR YOU, BAAY-JEENG!”

From the track’s lumps, bumps and jumps came crash after breathtaking crash. If a race went by without a monstrous stack, I must have still had my hands over my eyes from the previous wipeout and missed it.

Dressage it wasn’t. But are you telling me that’s a bad thing?

Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson’s gold medal was the perfect prize to handover to the next Olympic sailing regatta in Weymouth 2012.

Great Britain’s medal target in sailing was four – to achieve that in golds with an additional silver and bronze was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Percy and Simpson’s victory in the Star class was pure gold in every sense of the word. The lifelong friends showed great resilience to squeeze through an extremely testing medal race to secure first place.

“We had to fight every inch of the way” said Percy, who’s now a double Olympic gold medallist.

For Andrew “Bart” Simpson this was also the culmination of a long and winding Olympic campaign. He was Percy’s training partner in Sydney, and again for Ben Ainslie in Athens. Bart is now an Olympic champion in his own right.

Paul Goodison’s gold medal drew to a close a stunning campaign – unbeaten over three years at the Olympic venue, and in his mind there was only going to be one winner.

The Sheffield United fan had focused his training towards winning this event, after missing out on a medal four years ago in Athens by a solitary point.

The Laser class has a history of mishap and upset – you can be the best in the world ahead of the regatta, but still go home empty handed. That was never an option for Goody.

Great Britain’s Yngling gold medal was the result of a perfectly executed four-year plan by three girls and their coach. Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson developed themselves into an invincible unit and their victory came as a surprise to no-one, least of all themselves.

There’s little more than can be said about Ben Ainslie. At 31, he’s already a sailing great who can go on to achieve immortal status.

Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield’s silver medal was won from almost nowhere. In reality it was their gold.

The pair started their series slowly and a medal of any colour looked out of reach, but these two are seasoned campaigners and best of friends. They know how to dig themselves out a hole.

Rogers and Glanfield are disparate characters who spark off one another to produce a superbly strong team, one of the strongest in the sport.

Bryony Shaw’s bronze medal was a superb effort in the ultimately physical class. She was one girl who wanted her medal more than anything – her post race reaction said it all.

Her diminutive frame was required to perform the equivalent of two 10,000m races each day. Physical preparation and psychological strength allowed her compete to the very end of the regatta ensuring a valuable medal for the team.