Why Mister Ed scores over the rowing robot

Some of them were eloquent, generous and aware in victory. Others, like Redgrave, were determined to underplay their moment as just another day. For one though, this was about so much more than sporting achievement, it was the symbol of a nation's struggle to assuage its guilt about a political past that blots their psychological landscape like a scar.

As Freeman sat on the track, taking off her shoes and socks, she looked like a little girl lost.

She could have been in the middle of the Outback, all on her own, having run from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs. Instead, here she was in the midst of a packed stadium with flashlights popping all around her symbolising the union of Aboriginal and European Australia within her wide eyes and shimmering smile.

For most, it would be far too much to comprehend, let alone articulate, yet less than 10 minutes later she was capable of putting into words the confusion that arises when you are treated as more than just the ordinary human being you know you are.

She said: "I can't quite understand what's happened to me of late. There's always a part of me that doesn't want to deal with it as it's so overawing and overwhelming. I'm just a simple thing, a simple human being who gets annoyed when there's no toilet paper on the toilet roll and who has to wash and wipe up my family's home.

"I'm just out here doing something I love doing. All I know is people can sense I'm a pretty good person who's proud of who I am - of my roots and of my country."

With that we were right there with her. All of us aware Cathy is one of us, just a bit quicker. So far away from Redgrave, who despite his awesome ability with an oar in his hands, is increasingly incapable of letting anyone into his world of pain and gain. He goes through the motions of an interview with the mechanical clunking of the machines on which he trains and becomes more like a robot with every mundane word.

He may be a legend, but thank God for Matthew Pinsent for making sense of it all.

For every elated utterance of victory we also saw the painful penance of defeat - the faces of Ed Coode and Greg Searle said everything you need to know about the hollow heart of failure.

Coode bled anguish with every agonising word and you pitied him being in a house with a gold medal-winning coxless four, a gold medal-winning eight and a silver medal quadruple sculls.

It was tough for Searle as well, but at least he has his own gold medal from Barcelona to polish in his moments of gloom.

My heroines are three: Freeman for doing what she did with such grace and for understanding it all, Lewis for gritting her teeth through the agony and still looking graceful and Holmes for proving that for some it is not the winning that is all, but the knowledge that breaking your own personal barriers is just as important as finishing first.

Never has a bronze medal been so enthusiastically received.

The heroes are harder to judge because although Redgrave is one, I still wish he found it easier to share and I find myself worrying about what he will do now it is all over and what on earth it must be like to be married to such a man.

Eric the Eel is up there because he showed us all that it is the taking part that matters, but the image I will take away with me is of Coode, a hero even in failure.

I hope one day he realises it may be the greatest sporting stage of them all, but in the end it is sport - and sport, for all we may think of it, is a part of life but not all of life.