Olympic Medal Tally and Highlights

Every Olympics, a champion fulfills our predictions and rises to greatness. Two athletes became legends at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Olympic greats
American swimmer Michael Phelps began the Olympics a 2/1 chance at Ladbrokes to break compatriot and fellow swimmer Mark Spitz's longstanding record of seven golds at one Games. Phelps reached the mark by a fingertip - the one hundredth of a second that separated himself and Serbian Milorad Cavic in the 100m butterfly - giving Phelps his seventh gold medal of the Games. He then entered the record books when he and his teammates won the 4 x 100m medley relay.

Usain Bolt also fulfilled the predictions made about him before the Olympics, but with a surprise - nobody really expected him to break world records in the process. Bolt won the 100m sprint with ease in a record time of 9.69 seconds after going in an 11/8 favorite. Such was his dominance that he entered the 200m final as 1/100 favorite, but again nobody quite expected him to break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old world record in the process, in a time of 19.3 seconds. Bolt and his teammates then broke another world record in the 4 x 100m relay.

Biggest surprises
From an odds perspective, nobody surprised more than Tia Hellebaut in the women's high jump. The Belgian entered the final at odds of between 25/1 and 40/1 with most bookmakers, well behind the odds-on favorite and world champion Blanka Vlasic of Croatia. Hellebaut surprisingly matched Vlasic to 2.05 metres, winning the gold on countback.

The expected continuation of the rivalry of easily the world's two best tennis players - Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - didn't eventuate, as Federer crashed out in a shock quarter-final loss to American James Blake. Spaniard Nadal, second-favorite for the tournament, defeated Chilean Fernando Gonzalez to win the gold.

Medal tally
There were no surprises at the top of the medal tally, with the USA winning more medals (110) than China (100), as expected, but China winning the overall battle by virtue of winning more golds, also as predicted. China was odds-on favorite from the beginning of the Olympics to replace the USA at the head of the medal standings.

The biggest surprise of the 2008 Olympics was the sporting resurgence of the United Kingdom, finishing fourth - just behind Russia - with 19 gold medals and 47 overall. On the back of a host of cycling, sailing and rowing golds, the British overtook their more highly-fancied rivals Germany, Australia, South Korea and Japan to leap from 10th in the medal tally at Athens 2004, and set themselves up for a shot at the top three on home soil in London in 2012.