• August 21 down the years

Britain win by a whisker

Matthew Pinsent won his fourth Olympic gold medal in Athens © Getty Images

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2004
One of the great Olympic nail-biters, even closer than the iconic race which gave Steve Redgrave his fifth gold medal. Sir Steve was gone at last, but two other members of that coxless four were back in the final today: Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell forming a formidable crew with former world champions Steve Williams and Ed Coode. But the Canadians had designs on gold too, and the race ended in the smallest winning margin in Games history. Canada held a slight lead with 500 metres to go, Britain led by half a boat-length with 300 to go, then Canada came back over the last 100. The crews were virtually level on the line, and it took a while for the announcement to be made: Britain by eight hundredths of a second. It was a second Olympic gold for Cracknell and the fourth for Pinsent, who won the last three by a combined total of 1.29 seconds! Williams won a second gold in 2008 (August 16), while Coode now had one after his agonising fourth place in the coxless pairs in 2000. Definitely an event which had become a British preserve - if only just.

Still on the water, but in rowing boats this time, British superstar Ben Ainslie beefed himself up for a new challenge. At the previous Olympics, he'd won gold in the Laser, which is all lightness and speed. Now he put on more than two stone for the Finn class, the event for he-men. The new muscles didn't help in the second race: Ainslie was disqualified after a protest. But he won four of the next eight and placed highly in the others, so he could afford to finish way down the field in the last. He beat his training partner Rafael Trujillo of Spain into second place.

Ainslie inherited his gold medal from another British sailor, Iain Percy, who won it in 2000. Today in 2008, Percy also changed tack with success. Moving from the physical Finn to the very technical Star class, he teamed up with Andrew Simpson to win another Olympic title. They first sailed together when they were six. Now they finished fifth in the deciding race, five places ahead of Sweden, the only pair who could have caught them. Percy and Simpson knew they were going to win when they felt the rain and wind: 'We are Brits. We live for that stuff.'

On the same day in 2004, top British cyclist Bradley Wiggins (born April 28, 1980) won the Olympic individual pursuit for the first time. Two years earlier, he'd been embarrassed at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, when Australia's Brad McGee had won the event for the third Games in a row by catching Wiggins in the final, the ultimate humiliation. But Wiggins used that as motivation, and today he was ready. McGee had won bronze in the pursuit in the last two Olympics, but there was only a silver lining third time out. Wiggins set an Olympic record in qualifying, then took a substantial lead after just the first lap in the final. He went on to beat McGee by over four seconds and retain the title in 2008 (August 16).

In the athletics stadium, Britain's Kelly Southerton won bronze that would have been silver but for her usual abysmal showing in the javelin. She finished only 11 points behind Austra Skujyté of Lithuania, who chucked the spear 49.58 metres to Southerton's 37.19. But even a personal best wouldn't have won gold: Sweden's hugely talented Carolina Klüft finished 517 points clear.

Usain Bolt was born on this day © Getty Images

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1986
An Olympic athletics champion was born in Jamaica. Someone called Usain Bolt, a sprinter's gift to headline writers. No chance of a lengthy biography here (he's not old enough), just a pointer in the right direction: the way he gatecrashed the world stage, setting the first of his three world records at the 2008 Olympics (August 16). Drugs suspicions are inevitable, especially when five members of the Jamaican team failed tests before the 2009 World Championships, where Bolt won another sprint treble. But he's so tall that his shocking times are probably the future, and he was good young: world junior champion at 200 metres when he was only 15. So you have to hope.

1999
Jeremy Guscott scored four tries in a match for England again. He'd done it in a 110-0 mismatch against Holland the previous year, and now killed some more rabbits as England racked up another ton against the USA at Twickenham. Guscott had also scored three tries on his England debut (May 13,1989). His hat-trick span of 10 years 100 days is the longest in international rugby union.

In the same sport, World Cup winner Matt Burke began and ended his Test career on the same day, each time as a substitute against South Africa. In 1993 he came on to help Australia win in Sydney. In 2004 he couldn't prevent defeat in Durban. A strong runner and prolific kicker, Burke played in 81 Tests, scoring 878 points, including a record 25 in the 1999 World Cup final (November 6).

1928
Chris Brasher was born in Georgetown, Guyana but represented Britain at athletics. When Roger Bannister (born March 23 1929) ran the first sub-four-minute mile in 1954 (May 6), it was Brasher and Chris Chataway (January 31 1931) who did the pacemaking. The bespectacled Brasher didn't have the finishing speed of the other two, and he didn't set any world records, but he was the only of the three to win an Olympic gold medal (November 29, 1956), when his strength and determination took him to a Games record in the steeplechase. A well-known sports journalist and co-founder of the London Marathon, he successfully sued Channel 4 for suggesting he used the event to his own financial advantage (May 23, 1995). He married top tennis player Shirley Bloomer (June 13, 1934).

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