It doesn’t happen very often in this modern life, but occasionally something takes place that just makes words redundant. Day Eight of London 2012, in particular the evening session in the Stadium, was one such circumstance. It was billed as Super Saturday and, for once, that billing was an understatement. In all seven medals, six of them Gold, were won by Team GB – three of those Golds coming late in the day, in less than an hour of the most sensational session of athletics this country has ever experienced.
Special Delivery from the Poster Girl
It was one of those “do you remember where you were…” moments. In the years to come, countless millions will, no doubt, claim they were there on the night and, with the miracles of HDTV and surround sound, in a way we all were. But only the 80,000 who filed into the stadium for the seven o’clock start, and perhaps the hundred-odd thousand more crammed around the big screens in the Olympic Park, can really claim that honour this morning, assuming that they have enough of a voice left so to do.
Earlier in the day, the rowers had set things in motion with a storming session that produced two golds in the Men’s Coxless Fours and the Women’s Lightweight Double Sculls, plus a Silver in the Men’s equivalent. Almost inevitably, the Velodrome maintained the momentum as the Women’s Team Pursuit trio made it four out of five Golds in the events thus-far decided, after which Sir Paul McCartney conducted an impromptu performance of ‘Hey Jude’ from the crowd of six-thousand. With a World Record in every event, if the Cycling success continues, then only that early disqualification from the Team Sprint stands in the way of a clean sweep of the board.
But it was the Olympic Stadium that saved the best for last, as firstly Jessica Ennis completed her rout of the rest of the field in the Heptathlon. The second day of the competition included two of her weaker events, but she nailed both to put her into an almost unassailable position in the final event, the 800 Metres. Such was her dominance of the points table that she could have jogged-around up to twenty-seconds behind the eventual Silver Medalist. But that isn’t what true Champions do, so instead she held on the leading group’s shoulders around the final bend before blasting past them down the main straight to an emphatic win, then took the entire field with her to make a joint lap of honour around the stadium.
Part of that lap of honour temporarily delayed Greg Rutherford from taking one of his jumps in the Long Jump final. But if it made a difference, it was only a positive one as he was cheered to the rafters by the crowd to extend his lead in the competition, a lead that was never realistically threatened by any of his competitors. Ten minutes later, as the runners in the Ten Thousand Metres played cat and mouse in the early stages of their race, he was left to take the final jump of the competition knowing he had already brought his team one of their more-unexpected successes.
So then it was back to the Ten-K as the field bunched and jostled at a ridiculously slow pace. The studio-pundits wrang their hands in fear that one of our main medal hopes might be caught-up in some bizarre, yet typically-British, disaster that they could run constantly in lowlight progammes while they bang-on with their endless ‘if-onlys’. But Mo Farah is made of stronger stuff than medal-less ex-strikers, and he avoided all of the nonsense to emerge at the front of the field as they took the bell, accelerating away from the field to take the third athletics Gold medal of the night, a success rate already triple the team’s stated target on only the second day of competition.
The night finished in the only way it could, as Jessica Ennis stepped atop the podium to receive her Gold Medal from a presentation party that included Seb Coe himself, no doubt providing that extra ‘Well-Done!’ to the athlete he had selected as the Poster Girl for the Games. Then they all turned to face the flagpoles as the entire stadium joined in a passionate rendition of the National Anthem that eclipsed anything seen at a Last Night of the Proms.
Even the BBCs party-pooper-in-chief David Bond, a man who had even dressed in a black suit and tie in anticipation that his report would contain the usual ratchet sequence of disappointing tales, was unable to puncture the euphoria around him, his appearance instead simply replicating the comic aura of a pantomime villain.
How many of the holders of what was marketed all those months ago as the Golden Ticket for this evening’s session that includes the Mens 100m Final, were looking at them ruefully and pondering whether it can possibly live-up to what they had just seen on their TV screens.
Usain who?