Tokyo Olympics 2020 (deferred to 2021)

China won every diving gold medal, except Daley and Lee.....

China faltered a bit in that competition, which is incredibly rare, and Daley and Lee were able to take advantage, you'd have to say the same circumstances would have to occur for Tom to be in with a good chance for Gold but fingers and toes crossed. That would be a great story and a big moment.

I've had a personal Olympics thrill... a friend's niece won gold for the US in the women's kayak sprint 200 meters!! It wasn't being broadcast on the BBC that I could find (I looked for some of the qualifying heats at 2 am, with no luck), but has been covered in the US press. She's getting lots of publicity as a wunderkind (and not only won gold but set an Olympic best).

I tend to not dare watch big finals that we have a stake in as I fear I'll jinx them.

A few years ago someone I worked with whose son worked for the bbc covering sport told me rumours passed on by her son about a successful british athlete and how the bbc thought they'd won medals on drugs and that was apparently why they didn't commentate for the bbc. I've never heard anything remotely suspicious about this athlete elsewhere and lets face it there are loads of reason why ex successful athletes don't commentate, don't want to, don't have the right skills etc. But I never forget it when they're name comes up and while I have no reason to think there was anything in it I'm still pissed off I was told this unsubstantiated rumour as I can't unhear it.

Everyone worldwide is complaining about Olympics coverage this year, it seems. It looks like the company who won the rights put such restrictions on what can be shown by free-to-air broadcasters that no-one anywhere has been able to hit the sweet-spot combination of national interest coverage, niche sports people only watch at the Olympics, and the blue-ribbon athletics finals that everyone will want to air.

Yeah, I think I'd rather not know.

There's been a lot of criticism of the FIG for caring too much about TV regardless of the effect on the sport. The artistic gymnasts have been complaining about the difficulty of performing without proper warm-ups because the FIG has been under pressure from broadcasters to keep the action going. My feeling is that the sport should be done the way it needs to be done and if broadcasters have a problem with that then that's why editing is a thing that exists. If that's not enough then the broadcasters can go — themselves with a cactus.

Oh, but the judging is slow today. They're only using one set of judges, which is a strange decision considering that they have to get through 26 competitors performing four routines each. Often they'll use two sets of judges and alternate the apparatus so one group of judges can complete their deliberations while the other is watching the next routine on the other apparatus, which speeds things up a lot. (It also makes it a nightmare when you're sitting in the audience with your scoring sheets trying to watch a performance while simultaneously trying to make sure you don't miss the score from the previous gymnast. It ends up with a lot of looking over other people's shoulders like everyone's cheating at exams.)

I hope Kate French ends up the breakout star, modern pentathlon is a bonkers competition and I’m in total awe of the diversity of the events they have to master to win.

Talking of pentathlete's, I went down a youtube rabbit hole the other day. Ended up watching Superstars from late 70's early 80's. Danny Nightingale and Jim Fox in the past masters both acquitting themselves well.

But an epic battle between Brian Jacks and Daley Thompson in 1981. Thompson couldn't get near him. Battles in canoeing, cycling, gym won by Jacks. Thompson won a great weightlifting and was pretty decent at basketball. Really surprised me the difference. Thompson did mid forties for the dips to Jacks mid eighties.

Well done Laura, my superstar

Great to see Muir join Bradshaw with a global outdoor medal at last.

British record and beat Hassan, fantastic performance.