Human stories

‘The aggregation of marginal gains’ is the key to success, according to Dave Brailsford, the extraordinarily successful cycling coach to Team GB. You could say that’s been the motto of this Olympic Games. Not massive injections of dosh (or drugs, for that matter). But a heady cocktail of supreme physical effort and tactical nous. Brailsford recognises it’s the little things that can make the difference when mere fractions of a second are all that’s between gold and nothing. We discovered that his cyclists sleep on specially chosen mattresses and wear heated hot pants (yes, I do mean hot pants). Cyclists, he reckons, need to sleep well before a race. They also need to protect their thigh muscles from cooling down and tightening up in those vital waiting minutes between the race warm-up and the starting gun.

Saturday night’s Profile, the Radio 4 magazine slot produced by Lucy Ash and presented this week by Ruth Alexander, gave us just what we needed to know after what has been an incredible (sorry, but this week only superlatives will do) fortnight. We were given the back story, the human story, some kind of explanation for those astonishing bursts of speed in the Velodrome. The secret to Sir Chris Hoy’s majestic thighs: hot pants.

We also needed to hear that there’s no reason why we should not go on being brilliant. It’s all down to that attention to detail, and the willingness to prepare totally, not just for the sake of being on top but because doing something to the very best of your ability is something we could all aspire to. But there was a return to business as usual on the Today programme on Monday when Jim Naughtie interviewed Peter Hitchens, that arch cynic, banging on about the cost of the Olympics, the legacy, the false image of ‘modern Britain’ displayed in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.