The big contest
Rebecca Adlington is a bubbly 23-year-old whose parents travel round the world to support her career and who likes shoes. Federica Pellegrini is a tattooed Italian who is in a relationship with fellow Italian swimmer Filippo Magnini, for whom she left another team-mate, Luca Marin. He had previously been engaged to the French swimmer Laure Manaudou, whom he left for Pellegrini, who went on to take Manadou's world title. In summary, they are quite different. They are also fierce rivals for the 400m freestyle - Adlington is the defending Olympic champion, but since 2008 Pellegrini has beaten her twice in world championships. Can Britain's Olympic darling hang on to her bling?
Brit to watch
Sailor Ben Ainslie won gold in Sydney in 2000, gold in Athens in 2004, and gold in Beijing in 2008. Steve Redgrave might still consider that a bit rubbish (just the silver in 1996, Ben?), but for anyone who is not Britain's greatest ever Olympian, Ainslie's attempt at a fourth successive Olympic gold is probably worth a watch (Jacques Rogge, for his part, thought Ainslie's Beijing performance equal to that of Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps). At the Finn (heavyweight dinghy) world championships in May he won seven out of nine races to win a record-breaking sixth title. It's fair to say he's the favourite.
Brit to watch 2
A fun fact about David Florence: as a child he lived in the same Edinburgh street as Chris Hoy. Here's another: shortly before the 2008 Games he applied to be accepted to the European space programme as an astronaut, even going so far as to teach himself Russian. Alas, it was not to be, but space travel's loss was British canoeing's gain: he won silver in the men's slalom singles in Beijing. He'll be aiming to boldly go one better by scooping gold this year in both the singles and doubles events.
Grudge match
Cycling, as Britain has learned in recent weeks, is a curious sport in that often it takes a team to contribute to an individual victory. Amazingly, sometimes that can lead to tensions. And so it was with British ridersNicole Cooke – the UK's first gold medallist in Beijing – and team-mate Lizzie Armitstead, who fell out publicly and acrimoniously after last year's world championships in Copenhagen, when Armitstead, who had been held back by a crash, felt Cooke had abandoned her to "ride for herself". They will cycle together in the women's road race team, with the decision on which of them to favour for gold, according to team bosses, being left to the team itself, depending on how the race develops. Hmm.
The big question
What is handball? Handball has been part of the Olympics on and off since 1936, but the UK's ongoing rubbishness at it meant that we stopped competing in international competitions in 1984, reforming only when it became apparent that we would have to host it this year and so should probably at least give it a go. It's the second most popular team sport in Europe after football, and the French, currently world champions, are quite good. As for the rules – it seems you throw a ball into a net, in essence. For the rest: you'd better watch.
World record match
Michael Phelps wants to win seven gold medals at this year's Games (why so unambitious, Michael?) while Ryan Lochte, who has only six Olympic medals to his name, wants to stop him. But in one event at least, the 4x100m freestyle relay, the rivals become team-mates. Together, you'd have to fancy the US team for a record.
