Rio 2016: What we learned on Day 5

•    Rio’s weather was so horrible, damp and murky yesterday, the Men’s Individual Time Trial might well have been taking place in Manchester. Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara navigated the treacherous conditions to win his second time trial gold ahead of the silver medallist, Dutchman Tom Dumoulin. Great Britain’s Tour de France hero Chris Froome took the bronze, although it appeared he’d miss out on a medal until Australian Rohan Dennis suffered a broken handlebar, prompting the unfortunate Dennis to say a rude word in a live post-race interview.

•    When Michael Phelps added the 4x200m Relay to the 200m Butterfly he won earlier in the day (just another day at the office) he took his gold medal count to a staggering 21. To show you how massive this is, fellow gargantuan achievers such as Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and, er…David Hasselhoff showed their appreciation by Tweeting their congratulations. I mean, just think of it – the bloke who was in Knight Rider and Baywatch thinks you’re cool, it makes all that pain and struggle totally worthwhile.

•    The first five days for Team GB have been a little like paddling upstream in a leaky tin bathtub with a knitting needle, what with so many fourth places and near misses. However, day five at Rio saw a positive medal rush from Team GB. Staffordshire’s Joe Clarke kicked it all off in the canoe with a dramatic final round run in the kayak K1 which saw him show his class by paddling really, really hard to claim a momentous gold medal.

•    On to diving now, and if Great Britain’s Chris Mears story of triumph over adversity isn’t fit to be turned into a Hollywood movie, well I can only think it sounds too ridiculously far-fetched. Seven years ago Mears was close to death, having been given a 5% chance of survival as a result of a ruptured spleen and being put into an induced coma. Wind forward seven years and he and his diving partner, Jack Laugher, have made history in the pool after winning Team GB’s first ever diving gold in the Synchronised 3m Springboard. To quote a famous Olympic broadcaster, “Quite remarkable”.

•    As I mentioned earlier, it feels more like a winter games minus the snow, and that weird event which looks like ten pin bowling on ice featuring a broom and a massive steam iron. Yesterday’s tennis was a total washout following hours of torrential rain, which should bode well for GB’s Andy Murray who’s used to that kind of thing at Wimbledon. Then there was yesterday’s rowing regatta which had to be cancelled as a result of a waterlogged pitch high winds.