Sports Ladder (28th July - 3rd August)

UP - Claudia Fragapane - It's hard to pick just one athlete from the wealth of successful competitors in Glasgow but really its hard to look past the 16-year-old pocket rocket. Becoming the first British gymnast to win four golds in over 80 years, Fragapane won both the team and individual all-round, as well as the individual floor and vault finals. But it was her floor routine which really captured the imagination, combining gymnastics with break-dancing and performing death-defying flips and twits, the Brit will be a national hero for years to come.

UP - Home Nations - That said, I couldn't ignore the fact that in Glasgow, all of the home nations performed exceptionally well. England ran away with the medal table but the performances of Scotland and Wales as well as Northern Ireland were all fantastic. Scottish athletes in particular embraced their home games, smashing their previous all-round medal record of 33 with 52, and that is still with a day of competition left to go! An amazing feat at home but can they replicate it in four years time down on the Gold Coast?


UP - England Cricket - Positive news from the England camp for the first time in, well, a very long time. A victory! England actually won a cricket match this week! In some style as well might I add. Looking freshly confident both with the bat and the ball England claimed a 266-run victory over India in the third test for their first test victory in over a year. Questions still remain over the captaincy of Alastair Cook, but with few others putting themselves about, Cook has definitely bought himself some time.

UP - Usain Bolt - He came, he danced, he conquered. Ever the showman, Bolt lit up the final night of the athletics with a blistering final leg to claim gold for his team in the 4x100m relay final. After a testing week, with reports of him being unhappy (to put it mildly) with Glasgow, Bolt confounded the critics, appearing to savour every moment out on the track. He danced to '500 miles' with the crowd right up until the race and hi-fived at least half of the crowd (slight exaggeration) afterwards. Unquestionably the greatest sporting athlete of our time.

UP - Sabine Lisicki - With all the goings-on in Glasgow it is all too easy to forget that some other sport has actually been happening and something which went disappointingly under the radar was everyone's favourite smiley German, Sabine Lisicki, breaking the record for the fastest serve in womens tennis. Her 131 mph serve trumped the previous record of 129 mph set by Venus Williams back in 2007 and led to a crescendo of 'ooooohs' from the American crowd. We'll just ignore the fact that she went on to lose the match.

DOWN - Yaya Sanogo - You would think that after scoring four goals in just 48 minutes you would be riding sky-high in the public opinion. Alas, poor Yaya Sanogo became the brunt of twitters cruel humour after his 'celebration' following his fourth goal against Benfica. The young Frenchmen, managed to get his legs in a twist, tripping and stumbling off the pitch. The positives are that he scored four goals, and Arsenal fans managed to turn the trip into a mocking of Steven Gerrard. All's well that ends well.

DOWN - England Netball - What a brutal week it was for England's netball girls as they lost by just one goal, not once but twice in heartbreaking circumstances. The first occasion condemned them to second in the group with a gutting 49-48 loss to Australia. Consequentially this left them against New Zealand in the semi-final where they rebuilt their broken heart only to smash it for a second time in a 35-34 loss to leave them contending just a bronze medal. Oh, and they just lost the bronze medal match to Jamaica to top it all off. Awkward.

DOWN - Ashley Cole - Remember this moment because it doesn't happen very often. I have sympathy with Ashley Cole. After turning down a lucrative deal in the USA to ensure he still plays at the highest level, Cole has still found himself ridiculed by the British public. Most players fade from our attention when they move abroad, but not Cole who became the butt of jokes after a team photo at Roma shows him slightly away from the rest of the team. This has led to a whole host of pretty funny edited photos showing Cole lurking in the background of iconic photos. Poor Cole, he just can't catch a break.


DOWN - Phillips Idowu - There was something extremely uncomfortable about seeing such a well established athlete struggle as much as he did in Glasgow and for that reason he makes my list. Idowu has long been a big favourite of mine but has struggled in recent times through injury and a hiatus from the triple jump. At 35 perhaps it is time for Idowu calls it a day as he looked a long way off the competition and is unlikely to challenge for a major medal again.

DOWN - Southampton - What a difference a few months make. At the end of last season Southampton fans were jubilant as their team finished off the season in their highest ever position of 8th. Nowadays they are just praying they have more players than Blackpool at the start of the season. I've been to Southampton plenty of times and love it but clearly it is not a place for professional footballers, with five established first team players departing and another four or five rumoured to leave. Ronald Koeman has a long season ahead of him.