Britain set a new gold standard as a wondrous weekend produces harvest of eight Olympic golds

Golden girls: Britain's Yngling sailors (from left) Sarah Webb, Sarah Ayton and Pippa Wilson show off their gold medals
13 April 2012

By PAUL HAYWARD

Forget 1908 and its amateur antics. This was the most successful 48 hours in the history of our Olympic sport.

Beijing has erupted into life for Britain, but so has London 2012. The tipsters were right, the athletes steadfast in their resolve to deliver the goldrush. Take out the 'superfish' Michael Phelps, with his eight victories in the pool, and the British team were level with America last night in the all-important column of golds won.

Sport on our islands has a gold in overstatement, a silver in arrogance and a bronze in anti-climaxes. But for once the extravagant predictions of a middle weekend harvest came true as Britain won four golds on Saturday and another quartet yesterday to surpass the nine won at Athens 2004, with seven days still to go.

Golden girls: Britain's Yngling sailors (from left) Sarah Webb, Sarah Ayton and Pippa Wilson show off their gold medals

Golden girls: Britain's Yngling sailors (from left) Sarah Webb, Sarah Ayton and Pippa Wilson show off their gold medals

The 11 won in Sydney in 2000 was the best since the 14 gathered in Antwerp in 1920, and now Team GB, as they are irritatingly called, can eclipse all bar the 17 seized in Paris in 1900 and the 56 scooped up in London eight years later, when the Games were a Corinthian caper mainly contested by Brits, and the marathon distance was adjusted to accommodate Princess Mary's request that it start beneath the windows of the Windsor Castle nursery.

You get the drift. Pound for pound, Britain is at its highest point in the race for precious metal for 100 years. Yesterday's 24-carat champions were Ben Ainslie and the women's Yngling trio of Sarah Ayrton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson at the Qingdao sailing venue, Rebecca Romero in the women's individual pursuit in the velodrome and Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter in rowing's lightweight men's double sculls.

They joined Saturday's swarm: Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy on the cycling track, Rebecca Adlington in the pool and the men's rowing four of Tom James, Steve Williams, Peter Reed and Andy Triggs-Hodge. Nine golds were won in three days.

War cry: Rebecca Romero celebrates her gold for Britain in the individual pursuit

War cry: Rebecca Romero celebrates her gold for Britain in the individual pursuit

There were other notable near misses. Last night Louis Smith became the first Briton to win a men's gymnastics medal for 100 years when taking bronze on the pommel horse. British riders have obliterated the opposition in the velodrome, where the iron-clad Romero became the first British female athlete to win medals in two separate Olympic disciplines. Her old rowing co-conspirators collected silver in the women's quadruple sculls, the event she left 'to find a better vehicle to help me win a gold'.

Romero provided the weekend's best war cry when she said of Britain's domination of cycling: 'It just looks like we've shocked the world again. It looks like everyone is rolling over and dying.'

End of a dream: Paula Radcliffe is consoled by fellow marathon runner Liz Yelling

End of a dream: Paula Radcliffe is consoled by fellow marathon runner Liz Yelling

If this sounds vain it should be said that cocksure chauvinism is thin on the ground here in China. On the weekend Premier League football returned, rattling its jewellery, we saw the fruits of a) proper investment in coaching, talent and equipment and b) great physical sacrifice on rowing lakes and sailing routes, and in swimming pools, gyms and velodromes.

You know it's a good weekend when you win as many golds as Phelps, who broke Mark Spitz's record of seven at a single Games around the time Paula Radcliffe was hobbling into the Bird's Nest stadium in 23rd place in the women's marathon.

Even Radcliffe's enfeeblement had its place on the roll of British success. First, because she displayed such physical valour (and medical heedlessness) by trudging on when her shot at redemption had expired; but also because the age of British dependence on a handful of household names has finally passed.

As a few of us rushed across from the Water Cube, where the 19-year-old Adlington was reflecting on her double triumph in the pool, to watch Britain's greatest long-distance female runner limp past out of the fog of a receding past.

The public back home no longer pin their hopes on a smattering of stars. At the Water Cube, Adlington and Anita Lonsborough shared the morning's most symbolic hug. Lonsborough, now the doyenne of the swimming press, was the last British woman to win an Olympic swimming gold, back in 1960. She held that distinction for 48 years before handing it over to Adlington, winner of the 400m and 800m freestyle races, and the perfect image of a triumphant young Olympian.

Doubling up: Rebecca Adlington shows off both her gold medals

Doubling up: Rebecca Adlington shows off both her gold medals

She had reached these dizzying peaks, she explained, on £12,000 a year funding, plus £1,000 a year from Mansfield council and a bit extra from her parents, and was hoping to earn enough now in sponsorship to pay for her goggles, 'which aren't cheap at £25 a pair.' Just wait till the tsunami of commercial interest hits her.

To stand and listen to these people, so soon after they have entertained us with their talent, self-discipline and hunger for Olympic sport, is to dwell in a world far removed from football's self-absorption.

British riders have turned the Laoshan Velodrome into a satellite of the Manchester base where £4m a year in Lottery funding helps pay for the best technology and expertise.

But it's not just money that has rescued Britain from a comparative post-1920 wilderness. Even sitting down, as most of the new gold medalists are, there is a fierceness, an implacability that contradicts our self-image as a nation where nothing works and we pay foreign workers to do all the difficult and dirty jobs.

Romero woke on her personal 'D Day - facing the demons again, knowing it was going to be the toughest day of my life.' Her victim was the 33-year-old Wendy Houvenaghel from Northern Ireland, who only took up cycling at 27.

The cyclists are GB's Invincibles. Chris Hoy's power in the sprint is violence on a saddle. Bradley Wiggins is the lean destroyer. And there are youngsters zooming through to keep the wheels spinning: Steven Burke (bronze) and Ross Edgar (silver) both catch the eye.

On Saturday the men's rowing four said hello again to the wild frontiers of exhaustion. The so-called 'middle-class sports' have forgotten how to let us down. Adlington revealed how many young swimmers are animated by the thought of competing at London 2012, as Radcliffe still is. It was no good thinking of Beijing as a training camp for London. The team needed victories now to repay all the investment and to inspire.

If there was a cloud across this vibrant picture it was that track and field is still nowhere close to pulling its weight, though 25-year-old Jeanette Kwakye did become first British woman for 24 years to reach a 100m final, finishing sixth. With Kelly Sotherton's heptathlon challenge bombing, it falls to Christine Ohuruogu and Phillips Idowu (triple jump) to save athletics from its embarrassing slow-coach reputation.

As Britain shot to third in the overall table, behind China and the USA, even Australians were marvelling at the renaissance. The gold prospecting isn't over yet. The cyclists and BMX rider Shanaze Reade could collect there or four more and there are high hopes still in sailing, boxing and canoeing, through Tim Brabants.

Next Sunday, Beijing will pass the torch to London, and 2012 will cease to be a political football and start to confront us as an expensive and exciting reality. Without a GB team who mean business, the Games would only be an exercise in regeneration for the East End, with medals for our guests.

But the tenacity and spirit of a core of Olympic sports has helped us to view London more as a festival of one of our deepest loves. After this weekend, many Britons will tick off the days.

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