Report: London Olympic Games 2012 -

Article published the Friday 10 August 2012 - Latest update : Friday 10 August 2012

Bolt the legend, Rudisha - it runs in the family

A legend in his lifetime - Usain Bolt

Reuters/David Gray

By Paul Myers in London

Five things we learned from day 13 of the London Olympics;

We are officially in the presence of a living legend. Usain Bolt said he'd need to retain his 100m and 200m titles to rise to the legend bracket. He completed his task

London Olympic Games 2012
on day 13 with a convincing victory in the 200m final. His fellow Jamaicans Yohan Blake and Warren Weir took silver and bronze respectively.

Some are born with velocity, others have it thrust upon them. David Rudisha is, methinks, in the former category. His mother was a 400m runner and his dad was also a one-lap wonder - winning silver with the Kenya team in the 4x400m relay at the 1968 Olympics. Rudisha, 23, said he was pleased to go one better than his old man and get a world record while winning the 800m title.

Some guests can be just plain inconsiderate. The Netherlands men's hockey team went slightly over the top on their way to reaching the final. The Dutch beat Great Britain 9-2 in the semis. This begs the question: are the Dutch that good or how did a team so abject reach the last four? The Netherlands will play Germany in the final after they got past Australia by the more hospitable score of 4-2.

I've found my youth. When I was a youngster growing in up in south London there used to be a show on BBC TV on Sunday about skiing called Ski Sunday - it has a ring about it no? Let's face it, they could have called it Skiing Sunday. But they didn't. Though we occasionally had snow in south London, we didn't have mountains for it to land on unless, of course, you include the unofficial rubbish dump on Tooting Bec Common. But I digress. Ski Sunday would be a tea-time opportunity to see the likes of Franz Klammer and more importantly the spectacular crashes which occurred when a hapless skiier lost their balance in the slalem or on a corner. Off they went flying into the padding. My how we chortled. Watching the BMX bikers reminded me of those lyrical Sunday afternoons of incipient sadism.

The 10km swim is a funny old thing. The swimmers went round a course in the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park in central London half a dozen times and after one hour 57 minutes and 38.2 seconds Hungary's Eva Risztov touched home first. Haley Anderson of the United States finished second less than half a second behind. After all that distance there was a sprint finish. Choice.