Don't tell me you're not feeling good about yourself, sitting above Russia and Australia in the medals table, little old us. These mighty, brave, beautiful British athletes - they've come to the end of their journey and almost everything they have envisaged has come true.

Which is a big pat on the back to the Team GB sports psychologists. If I have heard it once out here I have heard it a dozen times. “I kept visualising myself on the rostrum.” “I only ever imagined winning.” The positive thinking among our successful Olympians has been up there with the best in the world.

We have only two countries to pick off on the leaderboard - the United States, who invented positive thinking, and China, who I suspect don't have a big demand for self-help books just yet and may use another mental state to induce performance, namely fear. So I reckon by 2012, as China becomes ever more Westernised and therefore takes a few sideways steps trying to work out its new national psychology, we may be able to gain ground even on them.

But I am leaping ahead of myself. Back to the Olympians. Let's start with Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter. Ah, you see, you're scratching your head. You know the names and now you are trying to place them.

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Go on. That's it, you've done it, Zac, 22, and Mark, 30, won the men's lightweight double sculls, a discipline that demands they even wear the same socks and sunglasses and, because they both have dark hair and weigh the same, they look pretty much like twins. I am particularly fond of these two. They won their gold medals and then they came into our studio at 2am local time to talk about it. Already it's clear they get the fame game. It's fickle.

The show I am hosting goes on air at 7pm on BBC One in the UK. Zac and Mark were shattered but they were enjoying their moment in the sun. It was an effort to come to the studio, an hour from Shunyi, where the rowing takes place, but they came. They not only came but, after the show, they hung out for a while and told us how they were heading out on the town to maximise their gold medals. This mainly involves free access to nightclubs and free beer when you get in there - go, boys.

When I asked Mark if he'd be around for 2012, he said: “Well, I am going to LA to teach and having a year off, so we'll see.” Zac was heading back into training after a short holiday. They put all that effort in and they know the moment of glory is transient.

Don't expect to see Mark and Zac on the back of your cereal box. They are as pure as sportsmen can get. It was all for the medal, not the impending lifestyle. So who will be on your cereal box? Who will be in the glossy magazine? I am pretty sure we will hear and see a lot more of Louis Smith than Zac and Mark.

Louis, bronze medal-winner on the pommel horse, is 19. He is the face of young Britain: a handsome mixed-race boy. He may not be as well educated as the two scullers and he is not as eloquent, yet he is every bit as inspirational to young people. When I asked him live on air why he was so good at pommel horse when we don't have a history on the apparatus, he said: “When I was a naughty boy in the gym my coach made me go to the horse and do more double leg circles than the rest of the class.” His weakness became his strength.

Even with his bronze medal around his neck, Louis was telling me how hard it is to train twice a day. He has the rewards but you get the feeling that he's still not sure that the sacrifice is worth it. The gratification isn't instantaneous.

Rebecca Adlington is your girl-next-door champion. What she does is train 50 hours or more a week, what she says makes it sound like a dip in the Jacuzzi. If you are looking to get young girls back into sport, Rebecca is the reality.

Rebecca also came into the studio at 2am, with her two big Gs swinging around her neck. She was a delight, a young woman who had hours earlier smashed a 19-year-old world record - and she wanted to chat about shoes.

She did have one concern. Her parents had been interviewed by an online magazine and at the end of the interview people had posted comments. She was horrified to read that people were being cruel about her. Why would they do that, she wanted to know.

The price of fame, Rebecca, you can't please all the people all the time. But Miss Adlington will give it a good go.

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• Graham Spiers