ContinueThree days have gone at the London Olympics and no gold medals yet for Team GB. In the immortal words of Catherine Tate, am I bothered?
Well no, not yet. Far from it. You see, the big guns have yet to be fired but the gold rush is just around the corner. The bottom line is that we have not failed to claim a gold medal in an event expected to do so. The closest we have done to this was the men's road race on Saturday when Mark Cavendish trailed in 29th on the Mall after his teammates ran out of steam but, even though he may have been favourite, a 156 mile race with just a five man team is far from a certainty.
Elsewhere we had hopes in the women's road race for something, and Lizzie Armitstead duly delivered with a silver. We had hopes, too, in the women's 400 metres freestyle in which defending champion Rebecca Adlington claimed a bronze in a race which, in truth, she was not the favourite to win, and hopes in the men's gymnastics where the boys, superbly, won a bronze last night.
I wouldn't expect a gold today, either, even though the eventing team are in silver medal place with the show jumping to come. Tomorrow, is another day altogether, the day when Team GB's gold medals begin to start stacking up.
Provided Bradley Wiggins has recovered from his road race exertions he will be favourite for gold in the men's time trial at Hampton Court while, just along the river at Eton, Helen Glover and Heather Stanning may well pick up GB's first rowing gold.
The men's eights, featuring Greg Searle could come close, too, while Emma Pooley, silver medallist in 2008, hopes for one better in the women's time trial back at Hampton Court. I'd expect two golds tomorrow, minimum.
After that, of course, we have the sailors (Ben Ainslie and Iain Percy/Andrew Simpson in particular), the rowers (Katherine Grainer/Anna Watkins and the men's coxless fours especially), the track cyclists (Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott, Jason Kenny), the athletes (Jess Ennis, Mo Farah, Dai Greene, the traithletes (the Brownlees and Helen Jenkins both gold favourites) and number ranked swimmers (Adlington in the 800m, Kerri-Anne Payne, Fran Halsall) all still to come. Can we equal or better Beijing's 19 golds? Touch and go. But we still have a very good chance.
