Team GB returned home with 30 medals. Excluding the �84 games, which was boycotted by the Soviet Union, Britain�s Olympic team haven�t performed as well for eighty years.
And as the Olympics began the English cricket team won the fourth test against the West Indies. They have now won seven consecutive test matches � something we last achieved in 1929.
After the disappointment earlier this year at getting knocked out in the quarter finals of Euro 2004, and Tim Henman�s early exist from Wimbledon, we have had a month of genuine sporting achievement.
We�ve never been very good at celebrating such successes. The reception given to the Olympic team when they returned to the UK suggests that this is beginning to change � and rightly so. We should enjoy this country�s sporting triumphs.
But I hope it will also encourage more of us to participate in competitive sports or take some other form of regular exercise.
Over 1 in 5 people are obese. The NHS spends more than half a billion pounds a year treating the condition. We are eating more and exercising less.
The increase in childhood obesity � it has doubled in twenty years � is particularly worrying. Getting more children to take part in competitive sports isn�t alone going to reverse the rise in obesity, but it will help.
The Government wants to see more competitive sports in our schools and more children having at least two hours of sports during the school week. The idea that competition damages children, or that sports days are undesirable, is ridiculous.
Not every child is going to have the athletic talent of Kelly Holmes or Matthew Pinter. But I hope their example will encourage more children to take part in competitive sports.
