Fans get ready for a time trial

The day known here as Super Friday has dawned, and naturally with the opening of the athletics everyone is taking a renewed interest in the clock...but with 400,000 spectators due at the various events today, the times attracting all the concern are not those of Maurice Green and Michael Johnson, but how long it will take to get in to and out of Olympic Park.

Several hours before the peak crush, reports suggest that this horrendous traffic challenge is being met with good humour and quiet competence. What a remarkable city Sydney is, and not for the first time my mind drifts towards an alarming fantasy about how Manchester would be managing had, for some surreal reason, the 2000 Games gone there.

The only really serious traffic problem so far came last night in the daftest Olympic event yet seen, a competition of such sublime idiocy that by comparison the rhythmic gymnastics (silly little girls playing with ribbons) is imbued with the gravitas of the marathon.

I'd like to take a few sentences to explain to you the Madison cycling race...I'd like to very much, but having watched it for a little over an hour last night, I have slightly less idea what's going on than before. In my defence, British cycling commentator Phil Ligget had the good grace to admit on world's worst TV station Channel 7 that he wasn't completely au fait with it either.

All I can say is this: about 60 cyclists, two from each competing country, move around the track, sometimes idling and sometimes sprinting for reasons as far beyond understanding as why, every now and then, one team-mate grabs the other by the arm and sort of sling-shots him off into the distance. If there is a rule to any of this nonsense, it seems to be that after about 40 miles of mayhem the British crash to the floor and the Australians get the gold.

If the second most surprising aspect to the Madison was the absence of the Arkansas Chutterbug and Dick Dastardly and Muttley, the first was that no one died in the Velodrome last night. Had Equatorial Guinea provided a team, on the other hand, there would have been fatalities. That small African nation has invaded the affections thanks to 'swimmer' Eric Moussambani, who finished seven seconds outside the world record for the 200 metres free style, a creditable performance had he not been swimming the 100m.