London 2012 Olympic

London 2012 Olympics: The wonderful and weird

With the Games now over, we look back at the amazing feats of human achievement and the surprising things the two-week celebration of sporting ability has taught us.

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New world records have shown a man can

• Pedal

  750m in 42.6s
  Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and
  Sir Chris Hoy, Team GB - team sprint

• Lift

  233kg clean and jerk
  Ilya Ilyin, Kazakhstan - 94kg class,
  combined with a 185kg snatch, he also
  broke the combined world record with 418kg

• Run

  800m in 1m 40.91s
  David Rudisha, Kenya

• Swim

  1,500m in 14m 31.02s
  Sun Yang, China - freestyle

And a woman can

• Pedal

  500m in 32.422s
  Gong Jinjie and Guo Shuang, China - team sprint

• Lift

  333kg combined
  Zhou LuLu, China - 75-plus kg class,
  146kg snatch and 187kg clean and jerk

• Run

  4x100m in 40.82s
  Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight and
  Carmelita Jetter, USA

• Race walk

  20km 1hr 25m 2s
  Elena Lashmanova, Russia

Body shape matters, but it isn't everything

• Athletics
  
  Usain Bolt
  Advantage:
  Unusually tall for a sprinter, but has a very long stride
  Medals:
• Swimming
  
  Ye Shiwen
  Advantage:
  Large, powerful hands and feet
  Medals:
• Cycling
  
  Bradley Wiggins
  Advantage:
  Long, lean, light and aerodynamic
  Medals:
• Cycling
  
  Robert Forstemann
  Advantage:
  Large, strong, 34" (86cm) thighs
  Medals:
• Gymnastics
  
  Asuka Teramoto
  Advantage:
  Tiny and nimble at 4ft 6in (1.36m) and 4st 10lbs (30kg)
  Medals: None
• Basketball
  
  Zhang Zhaoxu
  Advantage:
  Very tall at 7ft 2in (2.19m)
  Medals: None
• Swimming
  
  Fabio Scozzoli
  Advantage:
  Large underarm muscles, like fins
  Medals: None
• Judo
  
  Ricardo Blas Jr
  Advantage:
  Sturdy and hard to move at 34st 5lbs (218kg)
  Medals: None

Small countries can punch above their weight

		Population	Population per medal
1Grenada	1	104,487	104,487
2Jamaica	12	2,741,052	228,421
3Trinidad and Tobago	4	1,341,465	335,366
4New Zealand	13	4,368,136	336,010
5Bahamas	1	342,877	342,877
12Great Britain	65	62,035,570	954,393

...and so can Yorkshire folk

				Total
1USA	46	29	29	104
2China	38	27	22	87
3Great Britain	29	17	19	65
12Yorkshire	7	2	3	12

But most of all we've learned that Britain and its visitors embraced the Olympics

 = 10,000 people

7.4 million visited Olympic venues

• 500,000
  turned out to see the cycling road races
• 350,000
  watched Super
  Saturday on big
  screens
• 200,000
  went to see the road cycling time trial

2.5 million went to the Olympic Park

Overall, there were 705 people cheering for every one of the 10,500 competing athletes

And those crowds were also very noisy

• 105 to 110 - Olympic stadium crowd for various events
• 114 - Excel arena during Irish boxer Katie Taylor's first fight
• 124 - Velodrome finals, including Team GB's Sir Chris Hoy

Note: Medals per capita have been calculated using country populations from the UN Population Division, 2010 revision. Olympic Park visitor numbers are up to 9 August. Source: Locog, Guinness World Records, Dangerous Decibels Project, Action on Hearing Loss, UK Health and Safety Executive, UN Population Division, news agencies, BBC correspondents. Pictures: Getty, Reuters, AP, AFP.

Produced by Lucy Rodgers, Claire Shannon, Nour Saab, Luke Ward and Marina Shchukina

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 Source: BBC