London Aye

Chief Sports Writer

Saturday 11 August 2012

Stan Greenberg stopped by one of the diarist's desks on leaving the stadium on Thursday night.

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Hugh MacDonald

He was once the statistician for David Coleman, the BBC commentator. Stan fed the biographical details that helped make Coleman the best in the business. Now 81, Stan said that the 800m world record by David Rudisha was the 271st that he had witnessed live.

His first Olympics was 1948 in London. The 800m world best then, by German Rudolph Harbig, was 1:46.6. The Masai, Rudisha, ran from the front on Thursday, setting a world best of 1:40.91.Stan once wrote the biographical start sheets all by hand, even after the advent of computers, of which he had a passionate distrust, even though Coleman complained constantly about his handwriting.Stan was an arachnophobic, and one night, he could not start preparing his lists because a giant spider was on his desk. The spider went to bed so late that Stan was up all night, and went without sleep to complete the lists. Coleman, unsympathetic about Stan's plight the next day, took one look at his scrawl and said: "You should have let the spider write them."A huge crowd of more than 80,000 was at Wembley for the women's football final on Thursday. At half time there was a rush for the ubiquitous bars, each of which has huge TV screens. Bolt's 200 metres was about to go, so thousands stayed to watch. Consequently they missed the USA's winning goal, in their 2-1 victory over Japan.Interesting note in a London evening newspaper about a punter who had been queuing for three days for Olympic tickets. He was described only as "a Putney office worker who did want to be named". One wonders if this 'Putney office worker'; should have been somewhere else for three days.There has been much gnashing of team over the continual use of 110% by athletes with journalists running a sweep on how often it is used. It is an annoying expression when used by sportsmen and women but is the diary alone in thinking it is deeply concerning when used – as it was twice the other day – by the Chancellor of the Exchequer? But, then again, if George Osborne thinks one can extract 110 out of 100 then maybe it explains the double-dip recession.

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