The deeds were even greater than the expectations ? but Britain were taught a few lessons at the Commonwealth Games, too
Charles van Commenee's butt-kicking is paying off
After the European Championships in Barcelona, Charles van Commenee, the UK Athletics head coach, slated both the men's and women's 100m relay teams as "diabolical" and "a disgrace" after they failed to qualify from their heats. In Delhi both won gold, which they were quick to dedicate to Van Commenee. "Charles gave us a kick up the backside but it did us good," Montell Douglas said. "He's what UKA needed," Mark Lewis-Francis added. "He says it like it is." The understrength athletics team won 26 medals in all, eight more than they managed at Melbourne in 2006.Tom Daley is even better than his coach suspected
Alexei Evangulov, Tom Daley's coach, admitted that he thought winning the world championships at such a young age would ruin Daley's career. Later he added that now he knows he was wrong about that. Daley was much stronger mentally than even Evangulov expected. After his toughest year yet, in which he has suffered two major injuries, Daley won two gold medals in Delhi and he thrived under the intense pressure of the 10m platform final, when he won his duel with the Olympic champion Matt Mitcham by producing a dive that earned him perfect 10s from the judges.Zoe Smith is going to be a star at the London Olympic Games in 2012
Smith is 16, the youngest English weightlifter to take part in the Commonwealth Games and the first British woman ever to win a medal in the sport. She took bronze in the 58kg category, and was still disappointed with her performance. That is because she can, and will, do even better. She lives in Greenwich, south-east London, is polite, pretty and articulate. The British public are going to love her. There will be a lot more girls taking up weightlifting in 2013.
There is a way back for drug cheats
Four years after finishing his ban for using EPO, the Scottish cyclist David Millar won gold in the time trial and bronze in the road race. Millar got an exemption from Commonwealth Games Scotland that allowed him to compete in Delhi because of the work he has done warning young athletes about drugs and his position on the athletes' committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency. His reformation has only got more publicity after his performances here. Should the British Olympic Association allow him to race at London 2012?
The British swimming team have never been better ...
Rebecca Adlington and Liam Tancock won two golds apiece, but it is not just the elite swimmers who are performing well. The entire squad has been infected with Adlington's confidence. Everywhere you look there are medal contenders and winners, from the 27-year-old James Goddard, who also won two golds, right down to the 16-year-old Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, who made two finals. With Scotland's Robbie Renwick winning gold and Wales' Jazz Carlin taking a bronze and a silver, British swimming has never looked so strong.
... but the cycling team are not as healthy as we hoped
The British teams purposely sent understrength squads to Delhi, choosing to give competition exposure to a lot of young riders. While there were some promising performances, nobody produced the break-out ride that would have marked them out as a star in the making ahead of the Olympics. Australia secured 14 of the 18 golds, England won none.
Maybe the boxing selectors did make a boo-boo
Haroon Khan's domestic record in England was nowhere near good enough to win him selection for the Games. But after he made so much noise about deciding to compete for Pakistan because of what he said was the shoddy way he had been treated, he would have looked stupid indeed if he had bombed out. But he beat Wales' Andrew Selby, and while all the British boxers in his division will go home empty-handed, Khan won bronze. He can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Linford Christie still has a role to play in athletics
He has become something of a pariah and was denied accreditation so he could not come to the Commonwealths, but his influence was still obvious on the track. Mark Lewis-Francis won silver in the 100m after two years in the doldrums, and Katherine Endacott came back from a five-year break from the sport to take silver in the women's 100m. Both athletes said they owed their success to their new coach, Christie.What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Fran Halsall won five medals on a bread and water diet. Will Sharman checked himself out of hospital to run the 110m hurdles final. Rebecca Adlington won bronze in the 200m free after getting up at 4am to get to the pool in time for her heat. David Millar thrived in 41C heat in the road race. Andrew Baggaley won bronze in the table-tennis doubles despite being so sick he lost half a stone in the two weeks before the competition. Everybody agreed that it was a tough event, and they all added that they were stronger for coming through it. "I've learned a lot about what I am capable of" was the refrain of the Games.
It is not just the England football team who need to practise penalties
The England men's hockey team lost 5-4 in a shoot-out in their semi-final against India, and 5-3 in a shoot-out in their bronze-medal match against New Zealand.
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