Friday Five: Goooooold!

It has not escaped my notice that as it is time to do the Friday Five, Team GB has five gold medals at the Olympic Games. Mere coincidence? Of course it is, but I'm not going to let that put me off.

5 Gold Medals:

1. Heather Stanning and Helen Glover collect British women's rowing first ever gold medal in superb style. They led from start to finish in front of a highly vocal and thrilled local crowd to become our newest golden girls.

2. Bradley Wiggins (probably soon to be sir) proves he really is King of the Road with his blistering win in the time trial. Apparently he decided to do this event when his wife couldn't get tickets for the velodrome and he wanted to do something that all the fans could watch. And watch it we did, with only a little bit of drool.

3. As the slowest qualifiers for the Canoe C2 Slalom, Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott came out first and set the time to beat. No one could. They took Britain's first ever medal in this event. The pairing of David Florence and Richard Houdslow came second, so we won silver too! That's making a pretty big splash.

4. I have to admit I know nothing about this event and have never tried it, but it looks as though it requires nerves of steel and reactions of quicksilver. Peter Wilson won gold in the double trap shooting (which I think is equivalent to clay pigeon shooting) after being trained by Sheik Ahmed Al Maktoum (a member of Dubai's royal family), who won gold in 2004. Apparently Wilson just asked him if he would train him and he said yes. When asked what he was going to next, Wilson replied, "I'm going to get very, very drunk, probably do something stupid, and have a lot of fun." I hope he did - he deserves it.



5. After the disappointment of the women's disqualification in the team sprint, home fans' spirits were lifted at the velodrome as the men's sprint team powered to a new world record and a gold medal. It's Sir Chris Hoy's fifth Olympic gold medal and he won it alongside Philip Hindes and Jason Kenny. Fabulous stuff. I got up at 3am to watch it - a small sacrifice. I would gladly do it again. Arise to victory!

All of these athletes are incredible. Congratulaions to all the athletes at the Olympic Games (of every nation) for providing such a world class spectacle of sport. And there are another two weeks to go!