Olympics

As parades go, it was pleasant enough.

City boys wolf-whistled at Victoria Pendleton. Office girls took photos of Chris Hoy on their mobile phones and zoomed in on the triple-layered bling around his neck. Natasha Danvers-Smith warned autograph hunters to "watch out for the horse-poo" left by the mounted police escort.

What was missing, as the 12 floats rolled slowly from Mansion House through to Trafalgar Square, was the giddy-eyed Olympic fever which had gripped the nation back in the summer.

There might well have been good reasons why the parade had to be delayed until the middle of October - planning issues, traffic control, the busyness of the Queen's social diary - but it was hard to escape the feeling that the moment had passed.

So, the 2008 Olympics are done and dusted, with over 900 medals dished out to happy sportsmen and women from across the world.

There are some Beijing honours, however, that are yet to be awarded. Let's make them public without further ado.

Feel free to add a few categories of your own down below. Who knows - Jacques Rogge might be reading over his breakfast croissant and take note.

It seems a little unfair when you had 10,708 athletes competing for 958 medals in 28 different sports, but the Beijing Olympics will mainly be remembered for the deeds of just two young men - a 22-year-old sprinter from Trelawny, Jamaica and a 23-year-old swimmer from Baltimore, USA.

In the space of a few weeks here in China, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps transformed themselves from notable names within their own sports into global sporting superstars.

One was fuelled by chicken nuggets and yams, the other by fried egg and cheese sandwiches with extra mayo, but on track and in water, they each made the impossible seem easy.

Great Britain might have owned the Laoshan Velodrome and Michael Phelps the Water Cube, but down here at the Bird's Nest, it's been Jamaica all the way.

The sprint events at these Olympics were billed as a straight battle between the USA (population 303m) and the Caribbean island (2.8m).

Battle? It ended up as an almighty spanking. At the close of play, the scoreline read USA nil, Jamaica five.

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.

All day, the omens had looked so good for Phillips Idowu.

The rain had fallen so heavily in Beijing that he could have been at home in London. His hair was dyed red, the same tone as the Chinese flag. He even had the same bib number, 1809, as Kelly Holmes had worn when she won 1500m gold in Athens - the same number, spookily, as the Olympic triple jump record.

But in the end, even for a man who had said a few weeks ago that he felt "bullet-proof", who had gone all year unbeaten and who produced his season's best in the Olympic final, it wasn't quite enough.

Bird's Nest Stadium, Beijing

On Wednesday evening Beijing time, Phillips Idowu will walk out into the Bird's Nest stadium as hot favourite for triple jump gold.

It's an unfamiliar feeling for Phillips. After jumping to sixth in Sydney eight years ago as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, he's struggled to convert that talent into big medals.

This season, however, he's dominated from the World Indoors onwards, cementing his world number one ranking with a first round jump of 17.44m in qualifying on Monday.

Idowu has been almost scarily confident this summer, going as far as describing himself as "bullet-proof" last month.

But former Olympic triple jump champion Jonathan Edwards, says self-belief was never the problem for the the 29-year-old from Hackney.

In a wonderful week from an amazing athlete, this was the most staggering moment of all.

19.30 seconds? Jaws dropped. Gobs were smacked, flabbers were gasted.

That shouldn't have been possible. Michael Johnson's 200m world record was supposed to be untouchable. Usain Bolt was supposed to be tired after running eight races in six days.

Bolt, we should know now, makes the impossible real.

As part of her linguistics degree at University College London, Christine Ohuruogu wrote a thesis on swearwords and swearing.

It might have helped her understand some of the words that were coming out of British supporters' mouths when she came storming past Sanya Richards down the home straight on Tuesday night to win Olympic 400m gold.

What a run. What a final 60 metres. What a 49.62 seconds.

Ming Tombs Reservoir

You can plan and you can plan, but sometimes Olympic golds are decided by things you simply have no control over.

Britain's former world triathlon champion Tim Don spent Thursday and Friday watching the contents of his stomach come back past his teeth, at speed. For two days he could hold nothing down - not even water.

He had eaten exactly the same food from the exactly the same places as his four GB team-mates. 18-year-old Hollie Avil went down with the same vomiting virus; the other three felt fine.

Come race-day here at the Ming Tombs reservoir to the north of Beijing, Don was a man swimming and cycling on empty. Avil had already dropped out of her race the day before.

Team GB had kept Don's illness quiet so as not to tip off his rivals that something was wrong.

As it turned out, four years of preparation, 16 years of triathlon, all disappeared down the toilet, right in front of his eyes.

This is getting silly. So dominant is Britain at the Laoshan velodrome that even rowers are winning cycling golds for us now.

Chris Hoy's story is remarkable enough - taking gold in a completely new discipline after having his favoured event taken off the Olympic schedule.

But at least that was still in the same sport.

Beijing

You knew from the moment he stood by his blocks, seconds before the start of the most hyped 100m in history, and posed like a man messing about in a club with his mates.

It's the Olympic final. You're supposed to be shaking inside, aware that you're about to go through the 10 seconds that could define the rest of your life.

There are 90,000 people staring down at you from all sides of the stadium, billions more watching around the world on television.

Usain Bolt's performance on Saturday night was unbelievable, in the most flabbergasted, mouths-agape sense of the word.