Keely. Mondo. Noah. Tom Pidcock. The Fox Family. Simone.

We all knew Simone two weeks ago, but what a joy to welcome the others into our lives since then. They are patrons who are fending off the darkness of the sordid riots in Britain – and showing that standing proudly beneath a flag can be something pure and vital and a gesture of friendship.

Given the variety of sports at these Games – from water pinball to kayak cross to the perfect ten seconds in the 100 meters – it, my friends, is impossible not to find something you enjoy.

And what’s even better, because this moment is rare, is that these athletes don’t just want to win, they want to tell you why their sport is special and what it means to them and their own families.

Olympians aren’t really athletes – except for a few obvious cases. They’re nerds. They’re obsessed with something pretty unusual. And now they’re being celebrated, perhaps briefly, for finding something unlikely that they enjoy doing.

After Mondo Duplantis’ world record jump in the stunned Stade de France, people kept asking: How do you find out you can do THAT? In his case, he jumped over the pole with four poles – pole vaulting is a family job.

But a lot of it depends on luck, on having the right genes, on putting in the effort, on getting up again and again, on having the right people around you and on really, really enjoying what you do. This isn’t football, the rewards aren’t weekly and embellished with gold. Attention will wane.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to champions, medalists and potential medalists for Eurosport almost non-stop since the Opening Ceremony, and I’ve seen how much Olympians want to turn what they do into something even more important.

After interviewing British kayakcross silver medallist Joe Clarke, I made a passing remark about how incredible his sport looked from the sidelines and how excited I was to return to the UK and try it out.

He immediately started helping me plan – telling me where to go and how easy it was to get started; he wanted me to commit to getting out on the water. He was proud that others would love it as much as he did.

That’s not all I’ve learned from talking to Olympians seconds after the biggest moment of their lives – or their worst disappointment. What I’ve learned applies to all of us.

First of all, one person’s silver medal is not another person’s silver medal. When you talk to someone, you have to know their context and try to understand their emotions. That’s what everyone else at the Olympics wants to share and experience, and that’s what television can express in a unique way.

Secondly, that everyone wants to share their joy with their family, their friends, their teachers, their dogs (see: T. Pidcock) when they have won the gold.

But they almost always blame themselves when they miss. Great support reflects joy in yourself and is reinforced when you share it, but the reverse is also true. “It’s my fault, I made a mistake,” said rower Ollie Wynne-Griffith, devastated after missing out on gold in the men’s pairs despite leading. Like Ollie, we need our people to temper self-criticism when life is tough.

And finally: Most people don’t “feel” anything at the moment of their greatest triumph. They can understand it logically, but it’s about as real to them as it is to us spectators.

So when you talk to them right afterward, they’re full of emotion. Their adrenaline is pumping and they’re basically intoxicated, riding the waves of what just happened for the first time.

British gold medallist Emily Craig put it best after becoming Olympic champions for three years with her partner Imogen Grant, having missed a rowing medal by 0.1 seconds: “You are talking to two people who are standing here and have everything they ever wanted in their lives, and we don’t know what to do.”

To understand this, we all need the help of others, whether we are gold medalists or not.

Kate will be with Eurosport throughout the games – watch live on the Discovery+ app

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