Olympics badminton: Eight players disqualified

[malaise]

11. My favourite lines

So obsessed is the media with this single index that the BBC has stopped displaying the medals table because it is too humiliating. This is the pastiche chauvinism of a banana republic.

Give thanks for Helen Glover and Heather Stanning - gold at last
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/01/london-2012-glover-stanning-gb-gold
<snip>
Great Britain has collected its first gold medal of the London Games after Heather Stanning and Helen Glover won the coxless pairs with a stunning performance that will spark a mass outpouring of celebration and relief across the country.

One had never stepped in a rowing boat until 2008, the other will return to serve in the Royal Artillery in September. But Glover and Stanning will now go down in the record books as the first homegrown gold medallists of the London 2012 Olympics.

Not only that but, in their first Olympics, they have made British sporting history as the first female rowing gold medal winners in a sport that has reliably delivered over the years.