Year: 2012

Six gold and 1 silver medals made Saturday 4th August the most successful day in 104 years for Great Britain at the Olympic Games.

The medal haul started at Eton Dorney and the British rowers with the team of Alex Gregory, Peter Reed, Tom James and Andrew Triggs Hodge winning the gold in the Men’s Four.

This was followed by Katherine Copeland & Sophie Hosking very convincingly winning the Women’s Lightweight Double Sculls.

The media seems to be full of the day’s gold medal winners but I think Zac Purchase & Mark Hunter deserve recognition for a hard fought race to the line in the Men’s Lightweight Double Sculls and taking silver behind the great Danish pair.

The action then moved to the London Velodrome and the Women’s Team Pursuit. The British team of Dani King, Joanna Rowsell and Laura Trott added the third gold of the day, the fourth gold so far these games in the velodrome and set a new World Record in the process.

Then in the Olympic Stadium it was the turn of Great Britain’s athletes to add to the gold medal tally. After a fantastic first day Jessica Ennis was surely the favourite to win the Heptathlon but nothing is a given and she held her form to win the gold in emphatic style.

Greg Rutherford jumped very well though he never really looked happy with any of his jumps to win the Men’s Long Jump the first win in this event for Britain since 1964.

Then Mo Farah capped a historic day by winning the Men’s 10,000m in front of 80,000 jubilant spectators.

Britain has now won 29 medals overall, with Saturday’s six gold medals taking the team to a tally of 14 golds, 7 silvers and 8 bronzes so far at these Games.

Halfway through the London 2012 Olympic Games on what has been dubbed ‘Super Saturday’ due to the large number of events happening on this day.

Team GB are currently fourth in the medal table with 8 golds, 6 silver and 8 bronze medals so far and with many more sure to come.

The first might well come in the Women’s Triathalon which started a short time ago. There has been a little controversy with 20 year old Lucy Hall being chosen as the third member of the team despite not being amongst the best of British triatheletes. However nowadays British Olympians are very much a team rather than a bunch of individuals and decisions are made that are in the best interests of the team. Lucy Hall’s role here is to act as a ‘domestique’ and assist British number 1 Helen Jenkins in her task of winning the gold medal. A tactic that is now quite common in the British cycling team.

Talking of cyclcing despite the rule changes in the Track Cycling the British team are still dominating and will likely add a few more gold medals to the three that they already have won. Victoria Pendleton is surely the favourite now for the Women’s Sprint following her Keirin win, but she may be challenged by China’s Shuang Guo who is now an unexpected double silver medalist. However today’s cycling medal is likely to come from the Women’s Team Pursuit who qualified with ease and set a new World Record. Also competing today will be Jason Kenney already a gold medal winner in the Team Sprint he’ll be looking to set a great time in the qualifying round for the Individual Sprint.

On another track Jessica Ennis set the fastest time ever in the 100m Hurdles for a heptathlete, her time of 12.54 equaling that of USA’s Dawn Harper gold in the 100m hurdles individual event. With other good performances on the first day she is now on target for gold.

Andy Murray is in the Mixed Doubles quarter-final today and is in good form these Olympics having already guaranteed himself at least a silver medal by making tomorrow’s Men’s Singles Tennis final. Can Murray beat Roger Federer the man that beat him in this year’s Wimbledon final? He seems to think so.

Should prove to be a very exciting day of sport.