Diary – 11 August 2012

Omigosh I don’t know why I allowed myself to go in for this one. It is Tuesday afternoon, I am trying to complete a Spectator Olympic diary, and it will be a triumph of speed and nerve. I have three speeches to write, half an hour till deadline, and I can see the great Fraser Nelson’s number flashing up on my Nokia as I sit in the stalls of the Velodrome desperately scribbling on my programme. The crowd is going totally ape. The noise is so loud I feel like one of those heavy metal fans that used to crawl into the bass speaker and die of decibelic exposure.

They are going bonkers because the Team GB cyclist Laura Trott has put on her beautiful red dolichocephalic Alien-skull helmet and is flexing her limbs for the final shoot-out in a kind of cycling heptathlon called the Omnium. Laura is blonde, 20, and she is going to rocket round this wooden bowl of death at more than 64 kmh with her feet locked into the pedals of a featherweight carbon-fibre bike that has no gears and no brakes.