- 54: anthems played at the Games, one more than at Beijing
- 46: number of times The Star-Spangled Banner was played, eight more than any other
- 4: number of times it was played for Michael Phelps
- 13: anthems played that weren’t at Beijing, including Algeria’s slightly unusual effort
- 13: anthems lost since Beijing, including, sadly, Mongolia’s
- 8/1: odds you could get on the wrong anthem being played at a medal ceremony
- £0: money you’d have won on that bet
- 1: anthem complaint
- 210: seconds that the London Philharmonic Orchestra cut out of the world’s best anthem, Uruguay’s, to make sure it met Olympic rules on length
- 210,000: number of newspaper articles published pointing out that Uruguay’s anthem had been cut
- 0: number of times Uruguay’s anthem was actually played
- 1: number of times IOC president Jacques Rogge shoehorned a reference to God Save the Queen into his closing speech (“These were happy and glorious games”)
- 80,000: number of people in the Olympic stadium who didn’t get the reference
- 1: Li-Cheng Tseng (pictured above), a Taiwanese Taekwondoist, who provided easily my favourite anthem moment of the Games.
She was favourite to win her class, and ended up third behind Britain’s Jade Jones, but I’ve never seen someone so happy to be standing on a podium collecting a bronze. She stood and listened to God Save the Queen like it was her own. And she’s still smiling now!
If you can think of any others please let me know