KEY POINTS:
Yelena Isinbayeva
You don't get much better theatre than that provided by the glamour girl of track and field.
With the gong safely stowed - she needed only a couple of vaults to store this gold - Isinbayeva went in search of world record No 24. First vault, fail. Second vault, fail. The clock began its four-minute countdown. Isinbayeva went to talk to her coach, came back to the side of the runway, grabbed her duvet - yes, duvet - and hid under it.
Lord knows what she was doing under there but if it was playing hide and seek, it wasn't working because everybody in the stadium was watching her and her alone. She emerged, went through her elaborate pre-vault routine and set sail. Up and over, 5.05m, another world record. Magic.
Stephanie Rice
Australia's men might have struggled in the pool but their women remain the standard-bearers. Libby Trickett and Liesel Jones remain class acts but it was Stephanie Rice who emerged to steal their thunder.
She won three gold medals, setting world records in all of them. In the two medleys, 200m and 400m, she held off the likes of Kirsty Coventry, Katie Hoff and Natalie Coughlin, so this was no soft field.
She then combined with Bronte Barratt, Kylie Palmer and Linda MacKenzie to win the 4x200m freestyle relay.
Shelly-Ann Fraser, Sherone Simpson &Amp; Kerron Stewart
The USA probably already had a fair idea this wasn't going to be their greatest Olympics on the track before the start of the women's 100m final.
A young fella named Bolt might have tipped them off.
What nobody predicted, however, was that three of Bolt's compatriots would completely shut the US out of the medals in the women's blue riband sprint, or shut everybody out that wasn't from the Caribbean nation.
Fraser finished first - her 10.78s a personal best but still some way shy of FloJo's highly-suspect world record of 10.49s set in 1988 - while Simpson and Stewart posted identical times of 10.98s and shared silver.
He Kexin
The she called He is threatening to become the story of the Games after the International Olympic Committee ordered an investigation into claims she was too young to compete.
He won the uneven bars and was part of the winning Chinese team, a victory that was cause for great jubilation in these parts. Now she could be stripped of her medals if the IOC prove what most suspect - that her passport was doctored to make her 16. The allegations, backed by online documents from China's General Administration of Sport, the Chengdu Sports Bureau and other registration sites, have been reported by media including China's state news service.
Adding to the speculation that He's age has been changed to allow her to compete is a speech given by a Chinese sporting official in November 2007 during which she was introduced as a 13-year-old. Rules restricting teens under 16 from competing in gymnastics were put in place to avoid the exploitation of younger gymnasts who have more flexible bodies.
