Three University of Oxford alumni have so far taken gold in the London Olympics, meaning that the Oxonian gold tally matches that of the whole nation of South Africa, and comfortably surpasses that of Cambridge alumni at the time of writing.

It is no great surprise that Oxford’s Olympic success has historically been in rowing. Sir Matt Pinsent, formerly a geography undergraduate at St Catherine’s is arguably Oxford’s greatest ever Olympian, having rowed his way to four consecutive gold medals. True to form, one-time Blues boat mates Andy Triggs-Hogg and Pete Reed, who were both members of Oxford’s victorious boat race team in 2005, took gold in the men’s coxless four in the early stages of Team GB’s ‘Super’ Saturday.

Triggs-Hodge and Reed both came to Oxford as graduate students, the former in 2004 to study, again at St Catherine’s, for an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management. The latter spent two years at traditional rowing powerhouse Oriel, studying for an MSc in Mechanical Engineering. 

Another Oxford rower to win a medal this year is Constantine Louloudis, stroke of the men’s eight which won a bronze last week. Louloudis, who was a member of Oxford’s winning boat race crew as a fresher, is currently reading Classics at Trinity College but put his degree on hold to pursue his Olympic ambitions.

Perhaps the most interesting of this year’s gold medallists is relatively unheralded American swimmer Davis Tarwater. Tarwater retired from professional swimming in 2009 to concentrate on academia, having never been able to break into a USA Olympic squad.

But in an interview with the USA swimming website, Tarwater credited his subsequent year at Oxford studying for an MSc in Latin American Studies as being instrumental in the remarkable turnaround his career has undergone since then: “It was the best year of my life, and I think I got everything out of it that I possibly could have. I did not intend to continue competing athletically upon the completion of my Masters’ Degree in 2010.

‘However, after seeing the calibre of student attending Oxford, I realized that athletics was a good way to affect and inspire others, and for me to further develop personally. My friends in college were very supportive in encouraging my return to sports.”

Encouraged not just by college friends, but also by his relationship with God, the deeply religious swimmer made his return in 2010, with just 18 months to recover form and fitness before the Olympic trials. He scraped through these by virtue of Michael Phelps dropping out of his 200m freestyle relay berth, and was rewarded as the US team took gold in the event last week.

Finally, British discus record-holder Lawrence Okoye, currently 19 years old, will this year go up to St Peter’s College to read Law, having deferred his place year in order to focus on the Olympics. Okoye confirmed his potential by securing a place in the discus final with his last throw in qualification on Monday, but a best throw of 61.03 in the finals on Tuesday evening left him out of medal contention.  

You don’t want to read another article about Ainslie and Ennis, Murray and Mo, the rowers and the riders; which is convenient, as there’s nothing much more to say. Every paper this week has given the front-page treatment to the British medal winners – as well they should – to the point where any member of Team GB expecting a gold in the second week of London 2012 might almost start worrying about medal fatigue. Though if Phillips Idowu manages to both claim the triple jump competition and challenge Charles van Commenee to pistols at dawn there might just be a story in that. Still, I imagine we’ve reached saturation point with the headline sports.

So from the start I’ve been taking Jacques Cousteau as my inspiration and, remote control my bathysphere, exploring the murky depths the red button has to offer. It emerges that, beyond the big-budget, HD, multi-presenter zones of the velodrome and Eton Dorney, there are other worlds. Worlds where Hazel Irvine fears to tread. Often shown by fixed lens cameras, shorn of any presentation or commentary, this is pure sport. First stop was the under 56kg Men’s weightlifting. It was enthralling. These are men who weigh less than 9 stone, lifting over 26 stone. Without the benefit of commentary (or indeed any noise at all apart from the moans of the competitors) the viewer had to intuit the narratives – no idea of favourites or non-runners gave the whole thing a pleasant sense of surprise. Weightlifting, against all rash expectation, makes for compulsive viewing. There’s a moment between the lift beginning and its completion or failure where all is utter jeopardy – it’s like the flipping of a pancake but instead of a dough-plastered hob there’s a possibility for excruciating injury. The athletes are completely exposed, as if on stage delivering a monologue. And when Om Yun Chol of North Korea hoisted a preposterous 168kg of bar and plates into the air he blew the doors off the place. Most of this crowd were people who, it wouldn’t be too risky to wager, weren’t aficionados of the powerlifting scene, but they’d been won over by the sheer human exertion on display.

Next up was water polo. Not an event that’s made much of a cultural impact on the British consciousness, American high school films full of letterman jacket-clad jocks aside. But even without any analysis the bouts between south eastern European nations and traditional Olympics high-fliers like Australia and the US were compelling. An underwater camera showed the extent of the skulduggery, as many a man was sent to the sin-bin corner for a range of offences that ran the gamut from comical (tweaking) to violent (full on kidney punches). Highly tactical, the sport revolves around complex build-up play (think Arsenal) combined with explosive shooting (think other teams than Arsenal). Also impressive was the conditioning required to be constantly treading water before motoring oneself down the pool in possession, only to have to grapple with belligerent opposition.

So take the plunge. We have a week left – get off the beaten track. Whoever prevails in the Bolt/Blake/Gay tussl, the clip will be all over news broadcasts and highlight montages for months on end. But the winner of the women’s Elliott 6m sailing competition might not make BBC Breakfast, so catch her while you can. Taekwondo, Greco-Roman wrestling, modern pentathlon: there’s plenty of time left to learn enough to be a bore by the time Rio 2016 rolls around. In the good old days the motto of the News of the World was ‘all human life is there’. The same is true (if it was ever true of the Screws) of the Olympics. Tall and short, thick and thin, fast and slow. As Simon Barnes, the veteran chief sportswriter of the Times, has pointed out: every moment over these two weeks is the culmination of someone’s life. And that includes the kayak sprinters. So give them a shot.

So it’s been an eventful week for Olympic boxing. Sandwiched in amidst the gaudy pantheon of sporting events that is London 2012, the amateur boxing contests at the ExCel Exhibition Centre have not failed to routinely excite, bemuse and surprise. As I write, six of Britain’s seven male boxers have stormed into the quarter-finals of the competition, as GB captain Tom Stalker won a tough welterweight bout against India’s Manoj Kumar.Today will prove to be one of women boxing’s proudest moments too: the sport’s entry into the Olympic boxing stratosphere. With Team GB’s bright prospects, Nicola Adams, Natasha Jonas and Savannah Marshall looking ready to go, it is safe to say our fighting Olympians are in a very strong position.

The same cannot be said however, for Team USA. With so much happening it is easy to forget that the boxing world’s premier talking-point is actually what didn’t happen: fight fans watched on with shock as the once juggernaut United States men’s team made a humiliating exit from the Games, without one of them bringing an Olympic medal back home. Yes, that’s right: the once indestructible Team USA have failed. Although such an advent might stir a hearty chuckle from British viewers as we watch the tribulations of our American counterparts, and indeed an unkind laugh from most Cubans, the surprise U.S exit has raised some serious questions. Hadn’t the US, after all, come with the biggest and most anticipated boxing squad of any country to London 2012? Was it not this very country that captured a staggering and indeed record in the annals of Olympic history, 48 boxing gold medals?

Indeed, in the past, Olympic boxing acted like an elite finishing school and final examination paper for future American champions: a great opportunity for talented U.S boxers, who would seize gold medals before launching lucrative professional careers founded upon the interest generated from the Games. American sports fans in the 1960’s were treated to this dynamic spectacle when Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier and George Foreman won gold medals at successive Games (Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City) in the heavyweight category. All three became heavyweight champions, heralding the golden age of heavyweight boxing through their classic showdowns in the 1970s. US Olympic boxing went from strength to strength, with the star-studded classes of ’76 and ‘84 featuring future champions and legends, ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor and Pernell Whitaker. In 1984, Team USA left Los Angeles with nothing short of 9 gold medals.

They have had their knocks too. Future superstars Evander Holyfield of ‘84, Roy Jones Jr of ’88 and Floyd Mayweather of ‘96 have all been nothing short of robbed of Olympic gold medals due to absurd scoring and disqualifications. But even they walked away with some form of medal, and it is within the context of this glorious history of Olympic success that Team USA is now under such scrutiny. There are a lot of suggestions as to why the USA are now walking away medal-less in the men’s category. Critics have put forward the idea that American boxers are impatient to turn professional, drawn by the glamour, financial reward and publicity that championship fighting can offer. The concomitant of this is in an unwillingness to craft, develop and hone the skills of amateur boxing: a process which requires patience, dedication and diligence. Of the 2012 squad, only Rau’shee Warren has fought in an Olympic squad before.

Such an attitude, others would argue, is inevitable in a sport where severe physical damage is everyday: if you are going to get hit, you might as well get paid handsomely for it. Money in boxing is only to be found in the professional ranks. But unacceptable if true, is the assertion that the U.S boxing team were poorly handled and prepared for the challenges of London 2012. Indeed, Basheer Abdullah, the officer who ran the U.S army’ boxing programme for 15 years, was appointed to the post of head coach just weeks before the Olympics began. Moreover, the rules dictated that as a trainer who had dealt with professional prize-fighters in the current year, Abdullah would violate Olympic protocol if he were to be present ringside or in the corner of any of his fighters. The thought that the head coach cannot even be in his fighter’s corner during a contest hardly makes the disappointing results unsurprising ones.

Whatever the reason, this week represents a sad moment in the history of amateur boxing. While many, including Team GB, will certainly be happy to see American domination in the sport vanquished for the time being, it does not bode well for the future if the USA, once a bastion of dynamic and prodigious boxing talent, can’t get it right anymore. The Americans will hope that their women boxers, whose contests start today, can bring home some much needed medals.