One of the best things about the Olympic Games is how what purports to be a global seamless event is in fact a shifting mass of people, sports and memories. What stops the nation here does not have the same currency abroad.

Some would argue the Games were never better than between the wars and others lionise the flickering black-and-white images of the Fifties and Sixties. What I know is far from perfect, far from fixed. British rubs shoulders with foreign, death with glory, friends with fiasco. It is always going to be discussed and argued over, not least because Beijing will throw in another dose of Olympic legend and life. Click on the links to read the original reports from The Times.

50. Paul Elvstrom, a Danish sailor, wins his fourth gold medal in Rome 1960. Obviously, I have a soft spot for repeat winners - but he went on to compete in four more Olympics, bringing his participation to a total of eight summer Games. Only another 16 years for Ben Ainslie then ...

49. Could have made himself a laughing stock by losing the gold medal in dramatic style. But Greg Louganis cracked open his head, got his head together in both senses of the word and still won the gold.

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48. Zola Budd. The diminutive Budd tangled with Mary Decker in the women's 3,000metres in Los Angeles 1984 and the event ended in acrimony. Decker tearfully protesting from the inside of the track is about as graphic a demonstration of a shattered Olympic dream as is possible to witness.

47. Cathy Freeman. The iconic moment of Sydney 2000 for the home nation, just as it will be in China if Liu Xiang wins the hurdles, and possibly Tom Daley in London in 2012. What impresses me most is the reaction to winning. Not elation, not surprise, but relief. The pressure on her must have been extraordinary.

46. Montreal 1976. In the gymnastics team competition, Shun Fujimoto, of Japan, breaks his knee in the floor exercise and does not tell his team-mates for fear of affecting their morale. He completes the pommel horse and then the rings, finishing with a triple somersault on to his knee. He climbed the podium to collect his gold medal unaided.

45. Flo-Jo. The nails, the hair and the rumours. Winning the 200metres in Seoul by a country mile and still holding the world record two decades on should either make Florence Griffith Joyner one of the most celebrated athletes of the Olympics, or find her somewhere down the list.

44. Sydney 2000. Just as Jane Saville entered the Olympic Stadium for the last lap in the women's 20km walk, the Australian was disqualified for a rules violation. Asked if she needed anything, she replied “a gun to shoot myself”. A reminder of just how narrow the line between heroism and disaster can be. She was 600metres from the finish line.

43. 1968, Long jump. Bob Beamon took the event into a whole new sphere by breaking the previous record by almost two feet. It is still the Olympic record and the second-longest jump in history.

42. Alexander Karelin. “The Russian bear” was the undisputed legend of Greco-Roman wrestling for three Olympics, winning gold medals in 1988, 1992 and 1996. Undefeated in any competition for 12 consecutive years, his first loss came in the Olympic final in Sydney, where he finished his career with a silver.

41. I'm too young to remember Muhammad Ali in the ring at his best. But to hear a generation of Olympians greet him with an awestruck “Aliii!” when he lit the flame in the 1996 opening ceremony was spine-tingling. No other Olympic champion commands such respect.