A Golden Day for Team GB

Yesterday turned out to be something of a golden day for Team GB, with two gold medal wins seeing us shoot up from 21st to 14th place on the table. Our first gold medal came in the Women’s Pair rowing event thanks to an excellent performance by Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, and our second came in the Men’s Individual Time Trial cycling event thanks to Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins.

The success of Wiggins in the Time Trial meant that he is now the most decorated British Olympian in history, with a total of seven medals to his credit. That might be a world apart from the record set by Michael Phelps (see yesterday’s post) but it’s still a tremendous achievement that is well worth celebrating.

In addition to the two gold medals that we won on Day 5 of the games, we also managed to pick up a silver medal in the Men’s 200m Breastroke event thanks to 23-year-old Michael Jamieson from Glasgow. It is Jamieson’s birthday this Sunday, so having a silver medal win to celebrate as well will make it especially memorable.

Today is Day 6 of the Games and some big names will be working hard to try and add even more medals to the Team GB collection. Rebecca Adlington is expected to fare well in the Women’s 800m Freestyle swimming event, Sir Chris Hoy will be making an effort to replicate his cycling success at the Beijing 2008 Games and Victoria Pendleton will also be getting on her bike in pursuit of a gold medal. Good luck to those and all other athletes who are competing for Team GB today.

Now that Great Britain is off the mark as far as winning gold medals is concerned, I can only hope that the trend continues. At the time of writing, China is still at the top of the table with a total of 30 medals (17 gold, 9 silver and 4 bronze) and the USA is still in the chasing position with a total of 29 medals (12 gold, 8 silver and 9 bronze). Can another golden day for Team GB help us to close the gap a little? We’ll just have to wait and see…

Enjoy Day 6!