In the absence of Nicola Sanders the 400 metre final this evening has lost a bit of its fizz! I know we have Christine Ohurogu going for gold but I so hoped that Nicola would make the final and go one better than she did in the World Championships last year.

Very unlucky, she has had some injuries this year which hampered her preparation for the games. I just hope she stays in the sport and sticks around until 2012 when she can fulfill the obvious potential that she has.

Having said that I hope Christine 'O' can do some damage over one lap. Athletics is without a medal yet and desperately needs one. Sport needs heroes and needs good coaches too! Christine and Nicola have great coaches and could in time become the recognisable faces of British Athletics. Watch out for Philips Idowu in the Triple Jump - If Christine does not win our first Track and Field medal surely he will.

Meanwhile, hasn't BFP got plenty write about with the rest of the South Bucks medallists. They should keep the sports pages busy for a while. They deserve as much publicity as we can give them. Do not forget the Paralympics too. Ian Rose, Clare Strange and the rest can give us plenty more to cheer about very soon!

The Paula Radcliffe affair is an interesting debate. My personal feeling is that she is old enough and sensible enough to have made an objective decision as to whether she should run or not herself. Any number of coaches and doctors could of course have made the decision for her along with the British Olympic Association. But it is done now and so if we are to criticise anyone it would be Paula, if we chose to criticise her at all.

To Melanie and Smokey I would like to say that I do consider being very lucky to be here and am not really complaining about the long hours and do of course enjoy it very much indeed. Why you should be appalled by the blog I am not sure at all. I naively though that a birds eye view from the games may be of interest to some people. Perhaps I was wrong. I don't think I have written anything distasteful - Yet!

Oh and when the editor asked my how much I would want for doing it I did say that I would be happy to do it for nothing as long as he did not mind that it would not be on a daily basis. Simple as that!