Thomas Sutcliffe: Chiles leads Team BBC to a respectable showing

What I Watched This Week

Big occasions call for a willing spirit and if the BBC can do precisely that – enlisting Eddie Butler to apply his knowledge of loose rucks to the Zen niceties of Olympic archery – then who am I to hang back? Eddie, it has to be said, hadn't entirely adjusted. The word "steamrollered" is probably indispensable when analysing an All Black attack, but it can sound a little out of place applied to three tiny Korean women with Hello Kitty stickers on their track-suits.

Quite why Eddie ended up on the archery was never explained, but it would have been even crueller to leave him behind. The BBC's army of commentators, anchors, interviewers and statistics wonks put a serious dent in China's population control programme. And this is where the discomfort creeps in. Adrian Chiles I recognise and Clare Balding too. And I'm proud to say that I identified Gabby Logan. But accurately crediting the more cherishable moments outside of the BBC's set-plays wasn't easy. It would have been helpful, I think, to have had someone commenting on the commenting.

It's easy to imagine the kind of things they might say. "Steve Cram here, loosening up for the women's 400m by reading out the names you can see on the screen... standard warm-up technique this... calms the nerves... AND HE'S GONE OFF WELL!... nicely paced here, keeping something in reserve for the last 200... can he pull something out for the British... Oooh dear, that's not good!... We'll have to wait for the replay but it sounds as if he tried a bit of litotes there. Very unusual from Cram... a rookie error. At this level of competition it's dangerous to tangle with any form of understatement. Still, a lot of positives to take away from his eighth-placed finish."

The overall Games summary would be more complicated. Chiles did pretty well in the jolly bloke in the pub role. "Imagine being pipped right on the line like that!", he exclaimed after two British swimmers were beaten in the final yards of the open water event. Hazel Irvine, the girl next door, kept her end up too, always ready with a soft "heck!" or "wow!" to maintain the atmosphere of sustained incredulity.

To be fair, incredulity was sometimes justified – when Usain Bolt made it look as if his rivals were running through treacle in the 200m or when Rebecca Adlington left the green line of the world record trailing. In the velodrome Hugh Porter's remarkable ability to accelerate from conversational free-wheeling to delirious sprint seemed a fair match for the British team. But at other times the instinct to be flabbergasted, staggered, astonished and confounded left an odd impression of naivety. "What can you say about this young lady", gasped Cram about Christine Ohuruogu. "What a startling performance!" Startlingly, she had done exactly what the pundits had predicted she would – not always the case with British athletes, it's true. "I just can't believe they swim that close to one another," gasped Steve Parry during the open water race, a remark probably echoed in quite a few households, but seemed odd from the BBC's expert.

Cram was something of a serial offender in this regard – always ready to imply that people running fast was the very last thing you might expect at the Olympics. "There is stunned silence around stadium," he said after Jeremy Wariner failed to win the 400m, his remark barely audible over the roar of the crowd. Cram also proved adept at the rhetorical question. Rarely has expertise been deployed with quite so many question marks attached – most veiling the fact that the person being paid to know more than we did, actually didn't. And, when John Inverdale or Nicky Campbell were behind the microphone, the questions occasionally acquired an Alan Partridge quality. Campbell, anchoring Radio Five Live's coverage and competing with cutaways for reports on conditions on the Hanger Lane Gyratory, had a fine moment in the last race of Men's Laser class: "Why do sailors shout 'Ahoy there?'", he asked, apropos of absolutely nothing.

It's easy from the armchair, of course. And given the extreme challenges of the Games (care to have a crack at explaining the points system for the Madison? Or talking without repetition, deviation, or outright inanity for the entire course of a two-hour swimming race?) the BBC's vast commentariat acquitted themselves pretty well. Half the numbers could have done just as well but, although they scarcely broke with precedent in the way the British team did, they return without disgrace.

And the best pundit is...

Most of the expert witnesses were good, injecting a ground-level knowledge of just how much a medal can cost an athlete. But the top podium position went to Michael Johnson, a man to stir admiration in even the most sports-adverse viewer. Not only did he call races accurately before they had taken place – rather than confidently assert that he had known all along how it would go two seconds after the result was in, like some other pundits. He also showed that he understood life after sport. Invited by Hazel Irvine to lament the loss of his 12-year-old 200 metres record to Usain Bolt, he declined with winning simplicity, explaining that he could hardly complain about the loss of an honour he had expended no effort to retain. That moment – far more than the air-punching and tears on the podium – made the case for sport as a moral endeavour.