Another day, another gold. At this rate, Great Britain will have ... well, 15 golds, I suppose, if you do the maths carefully - or, to put it another way, about 613 fewer than China. But a gold per day would be enough to keep Hazel Irvine flying for the duration, and that's the main thing.

For Hazel, the uplift available from witnessing the rebirth of British swimming at Olympic level was always going to beat sniffing a pot of Tipp-Ex and jumping up and down. Sure enough, after Rebecca Adlington won the 400 metres freestyle, the host of Olympic Breakfast declared herself on a “natural high”. (The “natural” was an important emphasis, the exposure of the first drugs cheat of Beijing 2008 having been reported by Eleanor Oldroyd a short while beforehand.) At the same time, there's competitive in the pool and there's competitive in the pool. Kosuke Kitajima, who won the men's 100 metres breaststroke for Japan, says that if he doesn't also win the 200 metres, he's not going home. Now, that's fighting talk. One slip and he'll be drifting around Beijing in his trunks.

Sadly, Tom Daley and Blake Aldridge, in the synchronised diving, couldn't add a psychedelic dimension to Hazel's trip, but it was reassuringly pointed out by Bob Ballard and Leon Taylor, our commentators, that “their time will come again in four years”.

Ballard and Taylor, incidentally, scored well for execution yesterday, but the judges began marking them down for synchronisation. Taylor claimed at one point that the divers hit the water at 35mph, then later upgraded his estimate to 40mph, much to Ballard's slightly snippy displeasure. “It was 35, now it's 40. Have you measured it at 40?” Later, Taylor remarked, “Who ever said diving is easy?” “I don't think anyone did say that,” Ballard replied. Boys, boys - some togetherness on entry, please.

The remarkable thing about Daley and Aldridge is that, superficially, they seem even less physically compatible than John Inverdale and Sir Steve Redgrave, twinned by the Shunyi rowing lake in one of the most fearless sports broadcasting pair-ups since Clare Balding started helming big race days with Willie Carson. Inverdale was yesterday relating how Alan Campbell, a Britain competitor in the men's single skulls, had suffered “a tooth problem that went down to his knee”. Over-vigorous flossing, maybe? Now, though, fears grow that all the looking up and nodding at Redgrave will leave Inverdale with a neck problem that goes all the way down to his ankles.

Back at the archery, Eddie Butler, better known from rugby, continues to come to terms with his Olympic fate. “That's ten,” Eddie says, as another archer slowly lines up and fires. “That's eight ... another eight.”

Still, Eddie is nothing if not resourceful and, as the competition unfolds, is developing a snooker-esque whisper for those tenser moments, and a sort of half-cocked Welsh roar for victories. “It's an eight. It's not his hottest arrow, but it's enough.”

It's all about expanding your range, and this enforced spell by the targets could yet be the making of Eddie. British broadcasting doesn't really have a “voice of archery”. Maybe Eddie is that voice.

I would certainly be interested to get Eddie's take on what, in this day and age, constitutes a bow. Clearly, tearing a sapling out of the nearest wood, the way people used to back in the Friar Tuck era, has gone the way of Little John and (to a large extent) woods. Today's Olympic archer steps up to the line with a ship's sextant welded to the bottom half of a jet ski, and with a whole upstairs seating area, housing what appears to be a decent lump of the weather-monitoring system off the Space Station.

As a result of this additional technology, rare indeed is the athlete who scores worse than an eight, although a member of the Britain team managed it yesterday and shortly afterwards blamed his “fletch”. Again, help us out, Eddie. We're in the dark here. We need to hear from someone who knows.