Olympics/Paralympics

Michael Phelps hasn't had a normal life since he was eleven years old.

He's spent most of his free time back home in Baltimore training and pounding the swimming lanes, all with the aim of becoming the best swimmer the world has ever known.

And now, after an unprecedented eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, he is certainly that.

But at what expense?

National Indoor Stadium, Beijing

0.025.

That's how much stood between Beth Tweddle and her long-awaited, and deserved, dream of an Olympic medal.

The British gymnast finished fourth in her uneven bars final at the Olympic Gymnastics Hall tonight by the narrowest of margins.

She was pipped by tiny Chinese sensation Yang Yilin, who is just 16 (but looks about 13) and who pulled off a wonderful routine which ended with a full-length somersault (apologies gymastics' fans if there is a proper name for this) and stuck the landing for a 16.650.

Yang's dismount was greeted with a huge roar from the home crowd, and brought a beaming smile to her young face.

In Britain we quite rightly get excited when any of our Olympic athletes wins a medal, be that gold, silver or bronze.

The first thing that strikes one about Macau is the heat.

And "strikes" is the operative word. A thermal wave hit me like a wall as I emerged from my air-conditioned ferry.

The women's hockey team, desperate to atone for their calamitous failure to even make the Games in Athens, are the first members of the British squad to taste Macau and its climate.

"It's something else," admitted coach Danny Kerry as I watched him oversee training. "It's like running through treacle."

After gymnastic mother Larissa Latynina and her medal-winning achievements, we move on to the "Mother of Gymnastics", as Olga Korbut became known.

All sporting records are made to be broken but there is one out there that may just never be surpassed.

Welcome to our Olympics and Paralympics blog, which we are launching as the countdown to the 2008 Games begins in earnest.

Wednesday marks exactly 100 days to go to the 8 August opening ceremony (though oddly enough the football tournament starts two days earlier).

Writers from across BBC Sport, Radio 5Live, BBC London and BBC News will bring you the inside track on all 28 Olympic sports, as well as the Games themselves - which are set to be truly fascinating, if controversial, given China's hosting of them.

One of the uncertainties at the moment from a British perspective is whether the Games will turn out to be a triumph - or a failure. My view is...

Keep reading this blog for all the latest about the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing and also for the inside track on the long build-up to London 2012.

News and reports will be on the BBC Sport website but our experts will bring you behind the scenes access to the world's biggest sporting event right here.

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