How the sport works
Athletics, what North Americans call track & field, includes a variety of running, jumping, and throwing events. I won't explain every single event here, but you can generally assume the winner completed the event the fastest, highest, or furthest.
Men's pole vault final
Defending gold medalist and Olympic record holder Steve Hooker (below, waving) of Australia had an unfortunate off night and failed to make a single successful vault, so he was out of the competition fairly early on.
It didn't take long before three leaders and eventual medalists emerged. Rules dictate that all athletes must stay on the field until your event is over, even if you are no longer competing. So, as France's Lavillenie had already secured the gold medal and was preparing to use his next jump to attempt to break the Olympic record, Hooker was busy getting the crowd to cheer and clap for Lavillenie. Let me be clear: Hooker, who had long been out of the running, was garnering support for an athlete who was trying to break Hooker's own record. What a guy! Lavillenie was successful and set a new Olympic record of 5.97 meters, one centimeter more than Hooker in Beijing.
Medal results
Gold: Renaud Lavillenie, France
Silver: Bjorn Otto, Germany
Bronze: Raphael Holzdeppe, Germany
Women's 4×400 meter relay, round 1
Not surprisingly, the American women dominated their heat and had the fastest overall time by more than one second.
Women's hammer throw final
World record holder Betty Heidler took bronze while Wlodarcyzk threw a season's best and Lesenko set a new Olympic record.
Medal results
Gold: Tatyana Lesenko, Russia
Silver: Anita Wlodarcyzk, Poland
Bronze: Betty Heidler, Germany
Men's 4×100 meter relay, round 1
All eyes were on Bolt and his Jamaican teammates for this one, with Bolt hamming it up for the crowd. The Americans and Jamaicans were the teams to beat and thirteen of the fifteen teams with recorded times set either season's bests or national records. Below, a clean handoff for Canada.
Women's 5,000 meter final
Medal results
Gold: Meseret Defar, Ethiopia
Silver. Vivian Jepkemoi Cheruiyot, Kenya
Bronze: Tirunesh Dibaba, Ethiopia
Women's 4×100 meter relay final
It's not every day you see a sprinting world record fall, especially not by as much as a half a second, so the crowd at Olympic Stadium were up on their feet to celebrate with the Americans!
Medal results
Gold: USA
Silver: Jamaica
Bronze: Ukraine
Women's 1,500 meter final
For the second time in the past year, American Morgan Uceny tripped and fell in a major competition, thus ending her shot at a medal. My heart went out to her as she lay on the track, pounding it with her hands in frustration. But the race went on and the top two medals went to Turkey.
Medal results
Gold: Asli Cakir Alptekin, Turkey
Silver: Gamze Bulut, Turkey
Bronze: Maryam Yusuf Jamal, Bahrain
Men's 4×400 meter relay final
This was Oscar Pistorius's last time to run in the Olympics as the South African relay team set a new season's best. Angelo Taylor, who finished off of the podium in the men's 400 meter hurdles, won silver tonight. But the show belong to the Bahamas who won their country's only medal of the London 2012 games.
Medal results
Gold: Bahamas
Silver: USA
Bronze: Trinidad & Tobago
Upon leaving the stadium, my brother and I kept watch for athletes. In doing so, we got to congratulate a group of elated coaches from the Bahamas. I spotted the the stadium's announcer, Gary Hill, who was happy to have his picture taken with us. When I noticed his fellow announcer, Geoff Wightman, was holding what looked like a medalist's bouquet of flowers, Geoff handed them to me for the picture, explaining he happened to catch them after the medal ceremony for the women's 4×100. He wasn't sure if it was a bronze medalist from the Ukraine or a gold medalist from the USA who had thrown the bouquet, but I was happy to hold it for even a few moments.
Maral Feizbakhsh of Germany's 4×400 meter relay team.
We next spotted Steve Hooker, the good natured pole vaulter from Australia.
He was walking with two other athletes, including his girlfriend, Russia's Ekaterina Kostetskaya, who had finished ninth in the women's 1,500 meter final earlier in the evening. (Some serious googling revealed that the couple met at the Beijing 2008 Olympics when their respective Russian coaches introduced them.) When I sort of looked towards Kostetskaya, who was deep in conversation with her friend, Hooker interrupted and asked her to take a picture with me.
Without a doubt, Steve Hooker has to be the friendliest pole vaulter around!