Olympic Magic - The Greatest Show on Earth!

It's quite a while since I got down to doing a blog, but the opportunity has arisen and I have found a little time to do this blog!

You may be wondering why I have not been blogging. Blame it on the Olympic Games! Truth to tell I am not a very sport interested person, in fact the only sport I tend to follow quite regularly is the Formula One Racing.

By the time the Olympics had started I had a feeling that I was going to be sick to death of it, but no! the more I saw, the more I was drawn into it, and not just because Team GB were doing so well!

So let's stop and take stock of the events in the first week......

Lizzie Armitsead (Otley) Individual Silver 2012 Road Race


Jessica Ennis (Sheffield) Heptathlon Ennis, who opened the Olympic track meet Friday morning by running the 100-meter hurdles in a heptathlon record of 12.54 seconds, returned for the night session and picked up where she left off.

  Competing in front of a capacity crowd at the Olympic Stadium, many of them waving British flags, Ennis recorded a shot put of 14.28 meters (46 feet, 10¼ inches), then closed the night with another fast time on the track.

 Ennis closed the first day of the Olympic heptathlon by running the 200 meters in a personal-record 22.83 seconds to take a 184-point lead with three events left.
 
She finished with 4,158 points, while Lithuania’s Austra Skujyte had 3,974 and Canada’s Jessica Zelinka had 3,903.


Victoria Pendleton (Cycling) won the Individual Gold Medal at the 2012 Olympics in the Keirin

Rebecca Adlington (Mansfield – Nottingham) Individual Bronze in 400m & 800m freestyle. She won 2 Golds in the same event in 2008, Making her Britain's most successful Olympic swimmer ever!


The Men’s Team Pursuit: The British men’s quartet of Edward Clancy, 27; Geraint Thomas, 26; Steven Burke, 24, and Peter Kennaugh, 23, crossed the line in 3 minutes, 51.659 seconds in the team pursuit, winning the Gold Medal, and breaking the record time. Australia got silver and New Zealand won bronze.


Men’s Team sprint

Great Britain's team consisting of Philip Hindes, Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny won the gold medal with a time of 42.6 seconds, breaking the world record.


ROWING: Helen Glover and Heather Stanning cannot quite believe they were Team GB's first gold medallists of the London 2012 olympics. The gold medal drought finally ended after Heather Stanning and Helen Glover stormed to victory in the final of the women's pairs at Eton Dorney.

The Britons led the 2km race from start to finish, setting off like a rocket and getting clear water over their nearest rivals within 500m.

As they entered the last 500m, Eton Dorney erupted in a wall of noise to cheer them home, just before noon, in a time of seven minutes 27.13 seconds.

As they crossed the line, Glover punched the air and collapsed backwards into the arms of Stanning, who hugged her team-mate and covered her eyes in disbelief.

Speaking after receiving their medals, Stanning said it was "surreal but fantastic" to win.


Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins steamed to gold in the double sculls


Great Britain won the men's coxless fours for the fourth successive Olympics, edging out Australia in a thrilling final at Eton Dorney.

 Pete Reed, Andy Triggs Hodge, Tom James and Alex Gregory led from start to finish, with USA taking bronze.

It was British rowing's third gold medal of the regatta to match their record haul in London in 1908.

And it took the rowing team's medal total to seven, making it their most successful Olympics in the modern era.



Greg Rutherford won the Long Jump Gold Medal

  Mo Farah won the 10,000 meters Gold Medal

  Jessica Ennis won the Heptathlon Gold and stormed home in the 800 meters


Then in the second week we had Usian Bolt winning the 100 and 200 metres.


Nicola Adams (from Leeds) totally destroyed Ren Cancan (China) in the women's Flywieght final to win yet another gold for GB. This meant that the total of golds won surpassed those won in Beijing! At the moment we are 5 in excess of the Beijing total!

Add to this the number of Personal Bests, Olympic Records, European Records and World Records that have been broken and we truly have had "The Greatest Show on Earth!"