We did get two golds though. I wasn't surprised with Dwain Chambers' efforts in the 60m, although his astonishing 6.42 seconds in the semi-finals breaking the British and European record was a surprise.

I'm running out of things to say about Dwain. It was interesting to hear the jeers and boos inside the stadium - even when he was on the rostrum picking up his gold medal. That surprised me.

Sometimes we sit on or hands in Britain and say nothing. Opinion seems to be more polarised in Britain, but most people across the world in the sport - the audiences and newspapers included - all seem to be less sympathetic.

I think we have to be careful about the message we're sending out in this sport. Regarding Dwain's forthcoming autobiography - was it right to bring out the book when he did?

He doesn't seem to want to deal with the aftermath of it all. I'm disappointed and it seems to be the only thing we talk about in athletics. You can't deny his performance on the track but the vast majority of people in the sport and out of it seem unhappy with him and think that what he's doing is not helping athletics.

Mo Farah's 3,000m gold was a cracking run. To go out and push from the front all the way is tough. That was a world class performance and he's now got to go away and get ready for the summer and build on what he's done here. All his hard work has paid off.

The truth is that the British performances were below par.

Sarah Claxton - who equalled her own British 60m hurdles record in the semi-finals - didn't do well at all in the final. Greg Rutherford didn't perform that well in the long jump either. He was sixth, despite a personal best.

Van Commenee is a realistic man and he will know the performances were not as good as he would have liked. They were below par. Marilyn Okoro was in a high level race in the 800m final, but she made some poor decisions in that race bursting out so far in front like she did.

Van Commenee will have to ask why Okoro did what she did. And there is Claxton as well. Why the difference between her semi-final performance and the final?

Looking at other European nations - like the Russians and the Italians - they seem to be raising their game. The two Italian sprinters in the 60m men's final behind Dwain did really well.

But overall, it wasn't a great championships. There have been some world class performances and some pretty poor ones - with Germany's Sebastian Bayer 8.71m in the long jump a real highlight.

The Russian quartet won the women's 4x400m ahead of Britain but the time of 3:29.12 minutes would not have been good enough to win a medal two years ago - it was a shocking performance really.

So Van Commenee will just have to make sure the necessary changes are made with the British team during the summer and put in place.

I wondered why a project with so much public money going into it - £9.3bn - needed to be so secretive.

Now I have learned that companies building the facilities in east London are being forced to sign draconian gagging orders to keep quiet about the details of the project.

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Facing constant controversy about the cost of the Games, Olympic bosses are making companies sign unusually severe "confidentiality undertakings" which restrict them from talking publicly about all details of the work for six years.

I've seen copies of the contracts which even give the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) the right to search a company's premises and e-mails for evidence if they suspect that an employee has passed on information to the media or another third party.

The companies I have talked to are shocked that they have to sign a document which effectively allows 2012 to walk into their premises and start searching them. Legal experts have told me these contracts are draconian.

You can read more about my investigation in the BBC News story, including the response from the ODA.

When I went to Beijing with the Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell in November 2007, I listened to her telling the Chinese about the importance of freedom of speech around their Games last summer.

But it appears there are serious efforts being made to prevent people from talking publicly about our Olympics - unless 2012 want them to.

One leading human rights lawyer has also told me that there are concerns about freedom of speech and human rights in the UK's Olympic Act which gives special powers to the Government regarding the organisation of the Games.

Organisers of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics have told me they have no gagging orders in place ahead of their Games. So why have we?

They are great for people who collect Olympic badges - and, believe it or not, Beijing produced loads of pins with various "days to go" and the same Chinese company is doing the badges for London - but they mean little to the rest of us.

But there IS a significant Olympic anniversary on 16 January. It's going to be the halfway point between London winning the bid in July 2005 and the opening ceremony - three-and-a-half years gone and three-and-a-half to go.

Like a cake in the oven hit by a power cut in the middle of baking, the Games will be affected. But how?

One thing that isn't going to be hit much by the economic downturn is the Olympic Stadium. I was walking around the site the other day with Olympic Delivery Authority chairman John Armitt and construction is racing ahead.

Take a look at one of the webcams on the BBC London website and you will see the remarkable progress.

The policy is to speed ahead and attempt to help London build its way out of the approaching recession. Chairman Lord Coe was stressing the other day how important the Olympic project will be for both work and business in the capital. Expect to hear that message a lot in the next 12 months.

But there will have to be some cost-cutting across the £9.3 billion project. Some of the construction costs may actually fall because of a lack of demand for building services during the recession.

But most of the money-saving will come from changes to the organisation of the Games.

Expect 2009 to see London's "bid book" from 2004 to be re-written - probably by the spring. Fewer temporary venues will be built and some sports like badminton, rhythmic gymnastics and shooting are likely to see their venues moved to cheaper locations.

The media centre will not be as grand as originally planned and the apartments in the village will be designed differently.

Some of the sports will complain that their competitors are not being treated correctly but the International Olympic Committee is unlikely to kick up a fuss in the middle of a global recession.

The real challenge will be to make sure the cost-cutting doesn't go so far that the Games will look too "cheap" in 2012 when the economy is - we hope - in much better shape.

This is going to be a difficult balancing act for Seb Coe and John Armitt this year.

The Olympic cake will have to look and taste right in 2012 despite losing power and heat this year.

The conversations in Lausanne, where the International Olympic Committee is based, soon got around to the impact of the global financial crisis on sport and the government and London 2012 faced criticism.

Jizhong Wei, the new head of the International Volleyball Federation, told me he was disappointed with last week's decision by UK Sport to cut funding to eight of Britain's lower-profile sports including his.

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"The Games are not just about winning medals," the Chinese official said. London 2012 does have an obligation to promote all Olympic sports.

As I've reported before, 2012's cost-cutting plans to scrap a temporary venue at Greenwich for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics and move the sports to Wembley is worrying officials because it goes against the promise that competitors should compete - not commute.

But even in the IOC's splendid HQ on the banks of Lake Geneva with a squad of black Mercedes and chauffeurs standing by outside, there is a growing sense of financial realism.

IOC President Jacques Rogge knows that he may not sign the all-important TV rights deal for the United States for the 2016 summer Games before the host is chosen in a vote next year.

In the days of plenty these billions of dollar deals would be signed and sealed way before the vote and the IOC could count the cash in its Swiss bank accounts.

I put it to Rogge that the vote will be too dominated by money, given that American networks are likely to pay more for a city like Chicago winning than Rio, Madrid or Tokyo.

He denied this but the IOC is playing big business games with its TV rights. ESPN and Fox are expected to challenge current holders NBC in the American market and in Europe the whole way the rights have been organised is set for a major revamp.

But should sport always just sell to the highest bidder?

When this economic crisis is over, the Olympic world is likely to look very different but the jury's out on whether the Games and its sports will be in better shape.

And it now promises to be one of the stories of London 2012 as Grainger has decided to keep on training until the age of 36 in the hope of finally winning gold.

Think Steve Redgrave - after battles with diabetes and colitis - slumped over his blade in relief in Sydney having won his fifth Olympic title.

Think Matthew Pinsent's tears in Athens after his crew overcame losing a team-member to injury at the last minute to win a heart-stopping final and he gained his fourth gold.

Grainger's story may have been less celebrated so far because she has never taken the top step on the podium but it gains even more significance now as she tries once again to do so.

Born in Glasgow, raised in Aberdeen, a novice rower in Edinburgh and now living near the River Thames in Marlow, Grainger has been part of the Great Britain senior squad since 1997, and has long been the First Lady of British rowing.

She was in the quadruple scull in Sydney that gained Britain's first ever Olympic rowing medal. From there she set her sights on gold, moving into a pair with Cath Bishop for Athens, probably thinking that they were the two best athletes and that the pair was a slightly weaker event.

They were beaten by Romania, while the GB quad took a surprise silver. Had Grainger been in the quad perhaps they would have been two seconds faster and beaten Germany. It is a question she will never be able to answer.

It was different in the run-up to Beijing. The women's quad was put together early, winning three successive World Championships (although there was an early taste of the tears to come when they were beaten in 2006, only for winners Russia to be stripped of their title because of a failed doping test).

Settled into a crew of Grainger, Frances Houghton, Debbie Flood and Annie Vernon, they suffered an early-season set-back when they were beaten by China in the World Cup event in Lucerne but they were still confident.

In the Beijing final they went ahead early but the problem that hit first in 2006 - an inability to switch from cruising speed to withstand a late surge of speed from an opponent - struck again as China came through.

"I thought it would be the worst in the world and in some ways it was," she said on Friday.

"But having experienced the huge personal disappointment I can't imagine it would be worse than that. And we've all come out the other side.

"Whatever result comes you know you'll survive it and it's worth that risk. I'd rather go through it again than play safe and never try."

Although she says she had a pretty good idea in Beijing that she would return, Grainger took her time to come to a decision, taking a holiday in South Africa and Namibia and coming home having regained her perspective on life, realising she was more than just an Olympic rower.

She argues it is precisely that fact she could walk away, rather than the feeling she can't, which has convinced her to continue.

Even though she may protest otherwise, Grainger has a "life outside rowing". In January she hopes to being interviewing convicted murderers as part of her PhD paper, provisionally entitled The Social Construction of Homicide.

She could be training to be a lawyer, working in the media, giving motivational speeches, entertaining corporate clients but she has chosen to stick to the current day job and she is under no illusions about the task ahead.

"There's nothing quite like when the alarm goes off, it's pitch black, you can hear the rain against the window and there's ice on your windscreen and you know you're about to go out [on the water] for hours, being shouted at from the bank," she said.

"Day-in, day-out isn't the glamorous excitement that people see once every four years at the Olympics and that's what the decision has to be [based on].

"It's not: Can I in four years' time stand up in front of a home crowd, wear the British flag and do a race? Because, yes, I probably can.

"But can I do three-and-a-half years of gruelling training, feeling exhausted, feeling I don't have a social life, feeling that there's no guarantees, all the things that come with it?"

It will be of little importance to Grainger but the story of her challenge is, like those of Redgrave and Pinsent before her, better because she is able to tell it herself, expressing her emotions openly and articulating them clearly.

If you want an example, listen to the very candid interview she gave to BBC Radio Scotland's Edi Stark three weeks ago, when she first admitted it was likely she would return.

Unlike many top sportspeople she is also able to accept - with a wry grin - that she might be a little different from the rest of us, "horrifically competitive", a lot more driven.

And there is the potential stumbling block. Neither Redgrave nor Pinsent looked like they enjoyed winning those final gold medals. Their celebrations were ones of relief.

Is there a danger that the next four years will lose the lustre of previous Olympiads?

"I know people who have won gold medals who found out it's not the satisfaction they thought it would be," she said on Friday.

"I don't think you need to enjoy [all of the training]. I don't think you can. I spoke to Steve Redgrave last week in the gym and he was saying he got so bored with training.

"You find elements to enjoy. I really enjoy being in a squad. I love that it's constantly a challenge and there's something satisfying about falling into bed at the end of the day when you could not have done any more and you've pushed yourself to new limits.

"That's why it's not about getting that one result in London; it's got to be about the years in between."

Those next three-and-a-half years will be absorbing but it will be Grainger's next Olympic experience that will really grab the attention.

With my friend and colleague David Bond, the sports editor of the Daily Telegraph, I spoke to a series of key people involved in the campaign before we put the book together with London 2012's former communications chief Mike Lee.

I was, therefore, not surprised when Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell suggested this week that London might not have bid for the Games, had people known that a recession was on the way, though she now says her comments were misconstrued.

Despite the enthusiasm of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Cabinet was hugely sceptical about bidding in 2003. Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor, was worried about how the project would be funded, expressing his doubts to Jowell in a meeting that, we were told, was pretty stormy.

It was only after former London Mayor Ken Livingstone agreed a financial package with the Olympics Minister as they sat on the white sofas of her office in Trafalgar Square that Brown gave the green light for a bid.

John Prescott played a key role in persuading the rest of the Cabinet that a bid would be a positive thing for Labour. Many of the Cabinet were worried that the Olympics could be another repeat of the Dome. They didn't want that embarrassment.

Some of the influential people I talked to admitted that it really was "touch and go" whether the Cabinet would agree to a bid.

When I quizzed the Olympics Minister on Thursday about her comments, she was keen to talk about the positive side of the Games. She claims her comments were taken out of context and was clearly annoyed when I suggested she had made a gaffe.

There is no doubt her comments are unlikely to go down well in the Olympic world, especially at a time when the bidding campaign for the 2016 Games is gathering pace.

I know what she meant with them, but sometimes it is better to leave the past in the past, especially when the issue is purely theoretical now.

The story's a remarkable tale of ingenuity, bush mechanics at its finest. As you know, it had a golden ending. Well, several. It goes a bit like this:

Equipment guru Boardman was working with BBC Radio 5 Live at the time but didn't have accreditation to be with the British team. He thought he wouldn't be much use to them and, given there was great pressure on the number of accreditations each team was allowed, felt it better if his ticket went to someone else.

As it happened, the bike's builder, a Greek, wasn't in Beijing either. So Boardman gets a call from Dave Brailsford, GB's legendary performance director, and asked to (nervous swallow) "do what he can".

Boardman jumps into action, transforming his mobile telephone into a webcam and getting online. With the Greek bike builder, who is on an island somewhere, sat in front of a computer, Boardman is able to show him images of the problem areas. A diagnosis is quickly made and a solution found. Brailsford needs to get hold of some special glue that has to be heated to 70 Celsius before application.

Cue a desperate, but ultimately successful, search around the city for the said glue. Now there's just the matter of getting the temperature right without an accurate thermometer. Using a hairdryer, they heat it all up and, several singed fingers later, the repair's carried out: The rest is history.

Boardman's take from all of this? "Get accredited, 'cos you never know what may happen." God is in the details...

And it's because of them that London 2012's plans to move badminton to Wembley's indoor Arena in order to save money are likely to face some opposition from the international governing body of the sport.

I've been speaking to the Badminton World Federation where officials are worried about the journey from the athletes' village in east London's Stratford to the arena which is next to the main Wembley Stadium.

Badminton and rhythmic gymnastics were due to take place in a £40million temporary arena close to the O2 (formerly the Dome). That money will now be saved from the Olympic Delivery Authority's £9.3 billion budget. London 2012 will have to pay a rental fee, though, from Wembley Arena, which has yet to be finalised.

The Badminton World Federation has not received an official request from London 2012 about the move but preliminary discussions have already taken place. Given that badminton is set to stage its world championship at Wembley Arena in 2011, there are few technical objections to the sport being played there.

But the players will stay in hotels close to Wembley during the world championships whereas most Olympic competitors stay in the village for security reasons during the Games.

2012 officials have been looking hard at ways of saving money because of the global financial crisis. Their problem, however, is that they promised the world Games where athletes would compete - rather than commute.

Officials are already planning to build another, bigger temporary venue at the Olympic Park for basketball preliminary matches. There is no way of avoiding this because there aren't any venues in London available which can host crowds of 12,000.

The badminton venue is smaller, however, and it therefore works at Wembley. It would have been hard for 2012 to justify building another temporary venue at north Greenwich in these difficult financial days.

I was out on a boat the other day around the waterways surrounding the Olympic Park. It's a great trip and a very interesting way to see all the progress on the 2012 site.

Not everybody is aware of the miles of water in this part of London. After years of being neglected, these rivers are finally being upgraded.

I hope, by 2011, it will be possible for boats to take the public on tours of the Olympic Park when many of the venues will be completed. While security may stop boats coming right into the Park during the Games, it should be possible to get up to the 02 (formerly the Dome) at Greenwich where the gymnastics and basketball finals will be held.

When the Games are over, 2012 organisers promise to turn this Park into magnificent gardens and waterfronts - a Hyde Park for east London, they say. There are plans for special Olympic gardens with plants from all over the world.

I have no doubt that this could happen if enough funds are provided by the London Mayor after 2012. The environment for thousands of Stratford residents will be changed because of it.

But people in the construction business are telling me that London 2012's hopes of being the "Greenest Games ever" are going to come under intense pressure in the next year because of the economic crisis.

But the ODA also faces pressure to cut its budget and the cost of moving materials by road has dropped substantially in recent months because the construction business is struggling.

What that means is that it now costs between £6 and £9 to move one tonne of material in a lorry compared to £10 to £12 by rail and to £14 to £16 by water.

ODA chief executive David Higgins told me that he wants to deliver on the environmental promise. But with money tight, supporters of the waterways and some environmentalists fear the ODA may be forced to reduce the amount of material heading to the Park in barges.

This is a big environmental issue for east Londoners, given that one barge equates to 17 lorries on the road.

Being Green is not just about planting gardens. Environmentalists will be watching closely to see what the ODA does when the rivers to the Park are fully opened to barges in the next few months.

Every small town I visited seemed to have an athletics track, large swimming pool or a multi-sports complex and Germany's facilities for elite sport regularly attracted world championships to the country. Whenever I returned to Britain, especially during holidays in London, I thought our facilities were second class, sometimes third class, in comparison.

I still believe that is the case in London.

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There is an assumption that foreign teams will definitely set up their training camps around the UK in the run-up to the Games.

Wrong.

My French sources tell me northern France is already gearing up to attract an array of teams. In terms of getting to London they will have a shorter journey from there to east London than from other parts of Britain.

And southern Germany has hosted the Australian swimming team before major events in Europe before and I would not be surprised to see other teams heading to the great facilities there.

We've got to wake up to the fact that - with the greatest respect to centres in Bath, Loughborough and Sheffield - our sports facilities are still behind the rest of Europe at virtually every level.

That is why I am not surprised that residents in Fulham were complaining to me the other day about a local field being renovated for a major international polo event rather than for Olympics sports which are more popular with local children.

Hurlingham Park used to have a popular athletics track. But the grass has grown over it in the last decades and Hammersmith and Fulham council decided to dig it up this week in order to prepare the field for the polo event next June.

The council says it "wants to bring polo to the inner cities" and officials says the surface of the grass will be improved for the local community. That's fine - a rugby club do play there - and they are getting £250,000 from the sport of polo to make this happen. I'm sure that will save money from council tax payers.

But some residents say it would have been better to rebuild the track so that it could be used by local schoolchildren who are inspired by the 2012 Games to run.

We do need more athletics tracks, like the Germans. We do need to create more multi-sports centres which are just around the corner for our kids.

I'm afraid that 10 years on from my days in Germany, this country still looks second class in that respect.

The Olympics could be used to change that at every level but the government, local councils and Lottery bodies need to do something about it.

The £9.3 billion budget to build the facilities is under intense pressure because of the credit crunch and an Olympic board meeting concentrated on how money can be saved.

It is looking increasingly likely that this will be the main cost-cutting measure. Badminton< and rhythmic gymnastics, which were due to take place in the north Greenwich arena, will now be moved to the Wembley Arena.

I mentioned last week that international badminton officials are aware of the possible switch of venue. They are unlikely to stand in the way of it, given that Wembley is set to host the World Championships in 2011.

Any change of venue needs the approval of both the international governing body and of the International Olympic Committee. The main concern about the switch is the travelling time from the Olympic village in east London to Wembley which can take up to an hour.

The board discussed a special review of all costs by accountancy firm KPMG which also involved moving the equestrian events from Greenwich Park and the shooting from Woolwich. There were also doubts expressed about whether to build a temporary venue for basketball at the Olympic Park.

But all three venues are expected to stay in place despite opposition from local residents in Greenwich and from some shooting officials. London 2012 need the 12,000 seats at the basketball stadium because of the popularity of the sport and there are no other venues in London suitable for the sport.

London 2012 chiefs are also looking at cutting the number of apartments in the Olympic Village which is now envisaged at two thirds of the original size because private financing of the project has drained away.

This has already caused concern among team leaders around the world and is likely to more controversial than the badminton switch.

I understand that the IOC is looking at striking a global deal with an automobile supplier. This would mean London 2012 would not need to sign its own agreement with a car and bus manufacturer, which is likely to be hard in the middle of a recession.

London organisers need more than 4,000 vehicles to transport competitors, officials and the media around the capital during the Games.

While there are plenty of worries about the £9.3 billion budget to build the facilities for the Games, London 2012 are actually making positive progress with their sponsors.

They are now two-thirds of the way to their £650 million target for domestic sponsors. All that money goes towards the £2 billion bill to run the Games, which all has to come from private money - sponsors, ticket sales and TV rights cash.

But their latest £30 million sponsorship deal with Cadbury is controversial. I've been talking to people from the National Obesity Forum, who are disappointed that the Birmingham-based firm has been signed up when the Games are supposed to be about encouraging active lifestyles.

Cadbury chiefs say it's fine to eat chocolate if you keep fit and healthy. And Paula Radcliffe is known to stash bars under her bed when she's away training.

I asked Todd Stitzer, Cadbury's chief executive, to promise that the company would not be handing out free chocolate bars in any Olympic events with children, which he did. But part of the deal is that all of the company's products will be sold at the Olympic Park.

The Olympics and sugar have been linked for a long time. The IOC's deal with Coke is the oldest sponsorship agreement in world sport.

But is it OK for London 2012 to be seeking out "sweet sponsors"?

There are no 6am alarm clocks, the carbon footprint I used to create commuting down the M4 to the GB Rowing training base near Reading, has gone from excessive to almost non-existent; the washing machine is practically dormant, and my food bills must have decreased by about 70%.

I used to spend five or six hours training each day, I am now spending that time slowly working through a four-year long to-do list, and figuring out what I am going to do with my life.

Part of the reason for taking a break from squad training and trialling is that I want to build up a life outside of rowing. I am 28 and have been on the team since the age of 14, so I've got a lot to catch up on.

I've agreed what I'm doing with GB Rowing - it's a "no ties break" - and there will be no concrete decisions made on the future any time soon.

It is a very exciting time; I feel like I'm just leaving university and looking out for the first time at what's out there. It is daunting as well, with my funding and access to support services like physio stopping in a month, but I am resisting the urge to panic, making the most of each day and embracing the time I have been looking forward to for so long.

When I was training I always needed to be in bed by 8.30pm to get enough rest, and meeting friends after work was always a toss-up between having a social life and feeling even more tired the next day.

So going out without having to worry about the time has been one of the greatest pleasures since coming home. I think I have met more people in the last four weeks, than in the previous four years.

The biggest change I've noticed, though, is that I feel like an entirely different person. I feel free, with the control to make my own choices for the first time in a very long time. No one is waiting for me to arrive at training, and no one is chasing me around the lake at 8am.

It is only now that I have the time to think, that I realise what I have done and for how long. When I was training, my sights were always on the next hurdle - the next big training session, trial, World Championships, or Olympics, and usually all at once.

There was never time to sit and reflect over what I had already achieved. Even after winning a world title, within a couple of weeks at most, I was always focused on getting my seat back in the boat the following year.

I braved my local gym for the first time last week, after about six weeks of virtual inactivity. I have had to erase from my mind the scores I used to do on the rowing machine and draw a distinct line between "training" and "exercise".

I definitely think I am missing some sort of "crazy athlete" gene: I have no desire to row the Atlantic, take up triathlon, do an ironman, or climb seven peaks in one day.

The most I have done is 45 minutes on a rowing machine, and my body made it very clear after that that it was an experience still well out of its comfort zone for the time being.

Whilst everything is very exciting and new, there are times when reality kicks me in face.

I don't know what I would have done without the support of the staff at the English Institute of Sport. Being able to talk to people with such perspective and experience, who have seen me every week for the past eight years, and can remember all the downs as well as the ups, has been completely invaluable. Thank you!

Just seeing the emotion on some people's faces in the crowd brought me to tears; people shouting "thank you" and "well done" and jumping up and down. But really it was us that wanted to say "thank you" to them.

When everything is hurting during a race and you've tried everything, it is the knowledge that so many people back home and in the crowds are willing us on that carries us over the line. The support and enthusiasm of the British people are like nothing else I've ever experienced.

There were so many of us rowers that we had a float all to ourselves, which was fantastic. To be able to celebrate and soak up the day with all my team-mates was something really special.

I have hardly seen any of them to have a real conversation with since we left our hotel for the Olympic Village at the end of racing in Beijing, so there was a lot of news to catch up on.

It's so nice to see the people I have shared the ups and downs of the past four years with, looking so happy and relaxed and full of energy.

And this is all before we even got to Trafalgar Square! I can feel myself welling up now just thinking about when we turned the corner and saw the size of the crowd.

All we could see were people and union flags. How can anyone say that we are not a nation that is passionate about sport?

Listening to the interviews of the other athletes made me wish I could sit down for two weeks and just watch the Olympics all over, from beginning to end, catching up on all the amazing performances that I missed.

So much happened in such a short space of time; how can it all be over?

At least one thing never changes, and that is how efficient and organized the British Olympic Association is. We were whisked away as soon as the final bits of ticker tape fell down for some warm lunch and a bit of quiet time before the next major installment of our day: Buckingham Palace.

The highlight of the evening for me was seeing the physios and coaches and support staff on the team (who had not been involved in the parade). These are the people that hold us together day in day out of all the years we are competing; through all the highs and lows.

Being able to have a hug and to be able to genuinely say how you are, without the context of a race coming up or a race just gone by, is an occasion that I savour beyond measure as I know it only comes by once every four years.

I still don't know whether this time will come around again for me. It certainly reminds me of why I have always dreamt of being an Olympian, and reminds me that it is always better than you could ever imagine, and that words just cannot describe the experience.

One thing I do know though is that life since Beijing has been an entirely new and exciting one. This is the longest holiday I have had for 14 years, and I'm enjoying it all.

With the greatest respect to Britain's successful Olympians and Paralympians, and to the rest of the country, my belief is that it is among the people of Newham where we will find out if the 2012 Olympics have been worth it or not.

The east London borough is the Olympic benchmark. This is one of the poorest parts of the country which has suffered with high unemployment for years.

It also has the notoriety of having residents who are bottom of the London's league in terms of sports participation - and second bottom in the whole of England.

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But, more importantly, it also has an unusually young population. The Games are supposed to be about inspiring children to take up sport. If they are successful in Newham, there is a good chance they will be successful everywhere.

I'm feeling more positive about that after sitting in a classroom with a group of 12-year-olds watching the parade live on TV.

They were getting very excited about the medals won by Team GB and they were also talking spontaneously about how the achievements of those medallists were inspiring them to set goals for themselves.

No teachers were telling them what to say. These kids have been inspired by visits to the school from Olympians such as Kelly Holmes and Christine Ohuruogu, who lives just down the road. They have been motivated by the success of Britain at the Beijing Olympics.

And when we went into the sports hall with them, you could see they all have a competitive nature too.

The reason we decided to talk to 12-year-olds on the day of the parade was that it was at the same age that Seb Coe was first inspired to start running after watching pictures of the 1968 Olympics on a flickering black-and-white set in a school in Sheffield.

That moment changed his life. People can talk as much as they like about how today's kids just want to sit in front of computers all day but I think they are wrong. Forty years on and the generation of 2008 is just as fanatical about sport as Seb Coe's generation was.

The difference is we need to channel that enthusiasm and make sport happen for them. These days it's more dangerous for children to play sport in the street - largely because of traffic and crime - than it was in Coe's teenage years.

So the government and local authorities need to provide more facilities so that kids can play in a safe environment. And schools need to link their sporting activities with local clubs so that teenagers have the chance to carry on playing sport when they leave school.

Britain can do this. We just need to attack the areas of the country where these facilities are missing. Local authorities - and government - should be called to account if they are failing to deliver, just as they are in areas of health or education.

As one teacher told me in Newham: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."