Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Andy Hodge has a neat way of summing his next mission up. "It's all about building on this," he says pointing to his pocket. In it is his first Olympic gold medal.

Hodge isn't just talking about a plan to aim to repeat the in London in four years' time. He's also alluding to the plans the wider rowing world has in place to build on the success of Beijing. But more of that later.

Many of the rest of the 23 British rowers who came back from Beijing with medals have got some thinking to do over the next few months. Do they want to go through another punishing four years to compete in front of a home crowd in 2012?

Now the Olympics are over it is full steam ahead for the and the nerves are starting to kick in a bit more.

We headed off to on Saturday for our pre-Games training camp which is an important part of our final preparations and will help us to adjust to the conditions we will experience in Beijing.

It takes a lot of time for me to acclimatise, as it does for a lot of cerebral palsy athletes, so it is nice to get over there early and not feel tired when it comes to the competition.

There's a temptation (a very British temptation) when looking at the to ask how on earth are we going to do better than that in .

It's a fair question. This has, after all, been since our croquet-inspired domination of the .

What's not fair, however, is to just give up after asking the question and wait for the inevitable disappointment to arrive. As once said, "If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right."

So it is to the credit that it has asked the question and come up with an answer.

Its "" programme is perhaps the most impressive initiative the often-maligned organisation has undertaken since ignoring Margaret Thatcher's call to boycott the .

It has been a fantastically successful Olympics for , and as I've watched the and the enjoying the limelight, I suppose I cannot help reflect on the disappointment that will be returning home empty-handed.

I think the reason Archery GB has been so flat is that expectations were so high, and it is to the credit of our archers that that was so. et al have all performed so well on the international stage over the past four years that observers such as myself started to become too confident.

It all started with a bronze for Alison at , and a fourth place finish for Larry Godfrey. Since then, they have won a number of medals at various international competitions, ranging from world and European championships, to World Cup tournaments. And not for nothing are our women's team ranked second in the world, and the men fifth.

It's been a massive two-and-a-half weeks of action.

We asked 14 of our reporters from Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport and 5 Live to pick their best and worst moments.

So, the 2008 Olympics are done and dusted, with over 900 medals dished out to happy sportsmen and women from across the world.

There are some Beijing honours, however, that are yet to be awarded. Let's make them public without further ado.

Feel free to add a few categories of your own down below. Who knows - Jacques Rogge might be reading over his breakfast croissant and take note.

Media Village, Beijing

From the moment Nicole Cooke surged past four rivals on an uphill sprint to win Great in the women's road race, I thought we could be on to something. Not "our best Games for 100 years" something, but certainly a fortnight to be pleased with.

Those thoughts were back two days later when in the women's 400m freestyle to earn our first gold medal in the pool since 1988. British team-mate Joanne Jackson came home third in the same race and suddenly our often-maligned swimming squad was on the board.

And so it continued. We never had to wait too long for a success of some sort in that first week and our wildest dreams were delivered in spades over the middle weekend, when we leapt up the to heights we haven't seen since the Liberal Party were in power.

So what next? Having arrived at our 2012 target of fourth in the medal table four years early, do we dig in or take the next ridge?

National Stadium, Beijing

With one spontaneous gesture, a nervous tic really, Boris Johnson signalled exactly : don't even try.

The London mayor's comedy salute as he set foot on the red carpet at the Bird's Nest was a late bid for my moment of the Games.

It encapsulated what many British observers here have felt throughout these Games: we're all pretty blown away by the show the Chinese have put on, and , but we'll muddle through in 2012, and we'll try to put a smile on your face while we do it.

And did I really see him shout "I want the flag!" to Olympic impresario Jacques Rogge before it was his turn to do the ceremonial swirling bit? If so, I apologise for voting for Ken: you are a legend, even if you don't know what to do with your hands.

So that's that then. They are sweeping up around me after I can remember, and there really is no getting away from it - we are the next hosts of the summer Olympics. Gulp.

At some time, in some place, there is always a story.

As the Olympic action wound down on Sunday it was at the National Indoor Stadium, where the had just lost to France in the men's final.

.

It was still their best Olympic performance since 1956 (when they won a triple-jump silver).

I've been watching sport since my dad first dragged me along to watch Leicester City against Fulham in 1974 and if - in the intervening 34 years - I've experienced a more than Saturday in the Taekwondo Hall in Beijing then it's temporarily escaped my memory.

I'm not often lost for words, but I was beginning to reach the bottom of the box by the time we left 12 hours after we'd arrived.

If the hour's confusion that surrounded unprecedented reinstatement wasn't enough, we then had Cuban heavyweight off the floor after being disqualified and kicking the referee in the head.

It seems a little unfair when you had 10,708 athletes competing for 958 medals in 28 different sports, but the Beijing Olympics will mainly be remembered for the deeds of just two young men - a 22-year-old sprinter from , Jamaica and a 23-year-old swimmer from , USA.

In the space of a few weeks here in China, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps transformed themselves from notable names within their own sports into global sporting superstars.

One was fuelled by chicken nuggets and yams, the other by , but on track and in water, they each made the impossible seem easy.

In the same way as Mexico City is remembered for Bob Beamon and Munich for Lasse Viren, the athletics in Beijing will be remembered for Usain Bolt.

These were Usain's Games, and beyond that, Jamaica's.

Nothing could ever top what he did in the 100m, 200m and the relay. Even the other athletes only seemed to want to talk about him.

You need superheroes. You need stars that everyone round the world knows, not just within athletics.