It takes a properly qualified expert to bring out the crucial details and I, for one, will always be grateful to Colin Jackson for pointing out that Dayron Robles, the Cuba 110 metres hurdler who won gold yesterday, has “a silky smooth leading leg”. Would that be the result of waxing, do you suppose, though, or shaving? Or maybe a cream? So many further questions.

This was, of course, the event in which Liu Xiang, of China - the smoothness of whose legs, alas, we never really had the opportunity to get to grips with - had been intended to prosper, thereby uniting a billion fellow citizens and cementing his country's emergent place in the global, 21st-century economy. Quite a lot to ask of someone who hops over collapsible barriers for a living, maybe, but this is China in 2008.

“He would have been the king of China, probably, by the time he finished,” a rueful Dame Kelly Holmes noted, with sincere sadness in her voice, albeit while ignoring a fair chunk of Chinese history.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and many of us will have watched Robles leave the rest of the field well to the rear of his silky trailing leg yesterday and found ourselves thinking, “Smart idea to limp off early, if it was an option.” How is anyone meant to keep up with that, particularly if he happens to have the future of his nation stuffed down the front of his running top? “Robles is just brilliant, that's all I can say,” Jackson breathed, before going on to say quite a lot more because there was a replay to talk over.

It was the stand-out event on a mixed day for track and field, what with the 4x100 metres relay heats descending into a chaos of running and dropping things that at times recalled Saturday morning children's television, and what with Phillips Idowu having to settle for silver in the triple jump, despite some classy tension-ratcheting by Jonathan Edwards in the commentary box. “Something about the adrenalin, the do-or-die, the last chance,” Edwards said, warning us to expect some big, final-round leaping that sadly never came.

We also witnessed what Michael Johnson definitively described as “a terrible 400 metres”, although, in our opinion, the inevitable fuss over Jeremy Wariner's underperformance in that final meant that insufficient attention was paid to the superb dive across the line with which David Neville, Wariner's fellow American, secured a bronze medal. Forget lunging, Neville implied. Go horizontal. It's a wonder more people don't think of it, although we should add that Neville became, according to our recollection, the first track medal-winner in Beijing to be offered the assistance of a stretcher in his departure from the track.

Johnson seems to be rising to personal bests on a daily basis, and small wonder that so many of us now regard the track and field coverage as the Johnson and Jackson show. What a pair they make. There's Johnson, with his insights, his punchy phrase-making, his tinder-dry wit and his ability to illuminate the most arcane aspects of the sport. And there's Jackson.

Elsewhere, in a decision that will surprise no one, our gold for the worst tracksuit of the 2008 Olympics finally went to Russia for that cream silk number with the red inlay that would have been thrown out as implausibly Eighties by the wardrobe people on Miami Vice. Not even Glenn Hoddle, we would hazard, would agree to wear something as Eighties as that.

Another visceral blast from the past came courtesy of Martyn Rooney, who finished out of camera shot in that “terrible” men's 400 metres and then sighed deeply and said: “Unfortunately, I didn't do it on the day.” Took you back, didn't it? Remember when every post-event interview with a Great Britain competitor at an Olympics went like that? And how we used to smile tolerantly, because we had been raised to expect little else?

Now, of course, we tut coldly and move on, leaving them alone in their whimpering misery. A nation of winners, we are. Second is nowhere. Sixth? We didn't even know there was sixth.