Whatever you do, don’t mention the dr… Aaargh, nearly did it. The journalistic community (and what a close, loving one it is) is tying itself in knots trying NOT to say what it thinks about Jamaica (pop: 750) suddenly producing a team of big, muscly world record-breaking sprinters. Whatever it is, it can’t be the use of dr… Phew, that was close. Michael Johnson described crazy showman Usain Bolt’s destruction of his 200m world record as “incredible” approximately 38 times, and called him “Superman II” before going home and crying into his tattered old Superman I cape. Sadly, no such dark suspicions follow Craig Mottram around, after he fulfilled his world-class promise with a fighting fifth in his heat. Finding anything amiss with Jamaica’s world beaters would leave them and sprinting in a hole. Mottram is already there.

The cap was the biggest factor." 10km swimmer Natalie Du Toit blames a slipping cap for not getting a medal. Du Toit has one leg.

Think the GB cycling team’s success is as off as a year-old egg? So do the French. “It’s as if the British riders had a motorbike inside them,” said one bitter Frog, which gives you an interesting image, at least.
Cricket in chaos! Again! With Pakistan doing the violence/ leadership vacuum two-step, the one issue weighing on everyone’s mind is the Champions Trophy. Apparently if it doesn’t get moved to Sri Lanka within days, the whole of civilisation will collapse.
Meanwhile, the NRL has broken a record. Exciting, no? Apparently no – the Penrith-Bulldogs game last Saturday was 96 minutes long thanks to endless delays for video replays. Any more boring and we’d have to call it American football, which seems to go on for several days.