It took more than a year — and more than 900,000 pounds ($1.4 million) — to get his supercar up and running after a 2011 crash that left Atkinson with a badly damaged shoulder.

The high-performance car makes extensive use of carbon fiber and needed specialist care — it took weeks just to get a proper insurance estimate.

Ben Stagg, specialty insurer with RK Harrison, said the quality components used to make an F1 are one reason the repair costs were so high.

"All modern supercars are predominantly carbon fiber — most Lamborghinis, most Ferraris — and the smallest ding in carbon fiber is a big repair job," he said. "And part of the engine bay is gold, that's the best heat conductor. It's the materials they used compared to everyday cars that make it so expensive."

He said many owners baby their expensive cars, driving them only a few times a year in perfect weather conditions, but Atkinson actually drives his McLaren extensively.

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I witnessed prime minister saying to a group of people, myself included, that Mitt Romney had that unique distinction of uniting all of England against him with his various remarks. On behalf of my love of England, I have to support the president [Barack Obama] who is anything but making faux pas.

Cameron was last seen contributing to the #romneyshambles meme during Romney's whirlwind international gaffe tour. Romney said he thought London might not be ready for this year's Summer Olympics and the prime minister replied, "Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere."

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HAPPY TRAILS

Thousands of Olympic athletes have started streaming into Heathrow Airport. Some were even waved off by special volunteers wearing bearskin hats.

Heathrow is bracing for one of its busiest days ever with some 116,000 people expected to leave Britain on Monday.

A special terminal with 31 check-in desks has been set up to deal with departing athletes and support staff. After three days, it will go back to its previous life: a parking lot for airport staff.

— Gregory Katz — Twitter http://twitter.com/gregory_p_katz

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BEAT BOBBIES

The Olympics ended without any terror incidents or disruptive demonstrations, but police say their jobs are far from over. Some 7,000 officers will be on hand to police the upcoming Nottinghill Carnival, and the same number will help secure the Paralympics, which don't end until next month.

That means no vacations until then.

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Rhythmic gymnastics reminds me of Will Ferrell in Old School

— Jon Leuer (@JLeu30) August 10, 2012

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Then she saw 315-pound Reese Hoffa, who won a bronze medal for throwing a 16-pound ball.

“Finally,” she said, “there was someone on TV who looked like me. The shot putter. I was a shot putter in high school.”

I was a long-distance runner in high school. As a sophomore, I was 5-foot-9 and weighed 120 pounds, so lanky my mother forced me to drink a malted milkshake every afternoon. I wanted to play baseball, but even when I could hit the ball, I wasn’t strong enough to hit it out of the infield. So I went out for cross-country and track. While I never won a race, I did earn a varsity letter, and learned a lifelong sport. The Olympics were eight days old before I saw someone who looked like me: Galen Rupp, the 5-foot-11, 134-pound American who won a silver medal in the men’s 10,000.

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However, as millions here follow events in London obsessively, the reality is that the region has largely failed to live up to its sporting potential for decades, and relatively few Latin Americans have ever graced an Olympic podium.

Before the London games started, the region had a total of 128 Olympic golds. If that sounds like a lot, it's worth remembering that Sweden has 190, Australia, 136 and South Korea, 91.

And just over half Latin America’s golds, 67 to be precise, come from Cuba, where the Castro regime has dedicated vast amounts of state resources to achieving international sporting glory. Most of the rest come from just three countries, Brazil — the runner-up with a total of 20 — Argentina, and Mexico.

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Ill Doctrine: NBC's Awesomely Terrible Olympics from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

The Internet was abuzz with disdain for NBC's coverage of the 2012 London Olympics, but maybe it was just bad enough to be, well, good.

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—Olympic official to AP: IOC to strip Tyler Hamilton of 2004 gold, give it to Russia's Ekimov.

—Haley Anderson of US wins silver in grueling open water race at Hyde Park.

—World-record holder Ashton Eaton leads by 99 points after 7 events in decathlon.

—Diana Lopez of US loses her taekwondo opening fight.

—Pistorius' South African relay team advances to 4x400 relay on appeal.

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The IOC is set to formally strip American cyclist Tyler Hamilton of his gold from the 2004 Athens Games and reassign the medals after his admission of doping, according to an Olympic official familiar with the case.

With the eight-year deadline approaching, the official told The Associated Press the IOC executive board will meet Friday to readjust the standings from the road race time trial and award the gold to retired Russian rider Viatcheslav Ekimov.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision hasn't been announced yet.

After years of denials, Hamilton told CBS's "60 Minutes" last year that he had repeatedly used performance-enhancing drugs. The IOC asked for documents from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency before reallocating the medals.

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"I'm Ann Romney and I approve this dressage." #worksbetterifmispronounced

— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) August 8, 2012

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So it is both galling and perplexing to see the same politicians, led by Rubio, this week propose a special tax exemption for the income U.S. athletes earn on their medals at the Olympic games.

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The legislation, while perhaps well meaning, is not well thought out. To begin with, it's based on a report from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which, as we noted last week, is misleading and partially false (it gets tax brackets wrong and assumes Olympians are taxed for the value of their medals; they are not). But the real problem with Rubio’s bill is that it amounts to a massive tax break for the wealthiest athletes, disproportionately helping those with big endorsement deals, while doing little for everyone else.

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BOLT'S SWEDE EVENING

Usain Bolt claims he had a low-key celebration after winning the 100 meters. But what's that on Twitter?

The world's fastest man tweeted a photo of himself and three Swedish handball players in the wee morning hours after his win.

"Whatcha want to know?" he replied after initially claiming he "just chilled."

"I went to the cafeteria to get some food, I saw them and we started talking. They wanted pictures. We chilled. I told them I had a great idea for a picture. So we took a picture."

— Jenna Fryer — Twitter http://twitter.com/jennafryer

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NO EYE CONTACT

The competitors are in the arena for the final day of individual gymnastics competition, and it's striking how quiet it is.

Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber are going through some warmups on the floor, with Wieber doing her best Rocky impersonation by ripping off pushups and clapping her hands in the middle of each one.

The competitors do not make eye contact, with their teammates or rivals, and hardly a word is being spoken.

It's singular focus, razor sharp concentration. For one more day.

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Oh #jeah, #LochteNation backlash is in full effect.

Jezebel has enumerated the top 10 reasons he's "America's Sexiest Douchebag" ("he calls himself a 'rock star,'" "he's fratty as fuck"). New York magazine compiled some of his most memorable tweets, including philosophical gems like, "Always reach for the moon cuz if u slip up u will still be a star!! #Jeah," and horrific misspelling like, "Rocks, paper, siccor........ ." Complex magazine concocted a parodic slide show titled "Ryan Lochte's Guide to Looking Like an Olympic Douchebag" (tip numero uno: "Beanies are perfect 24/7. They're like a swim cap, but you know, for land"). And BuzzFeed put together a video of his finest head-scratching interview moments (the standout: "What defines me? [Thoughtful pause] Ryan Lochte").

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First, we talked about the dramatic upending of expectations in women’s gymnastics. (As background, Michael described how the all-around winner of the summer gymnastics competition, just like the women’s winner of Olympic figure skating, automatically becomes the newest U.S. sweetheart.) After discussing how NBC was reeling after Jordyn Wieber, the world champion and “odds-on” favorite failed to qualify for the women’s all-around — after her team gold, NBC, still obsessing on Jordan, turned it into a “redemption story” — Michael was very curious to see how Gabby Douglas would fit the role, and handle the marketing windfall.

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Ivan Tsikhan, who won the silver medal in Athens, had been expected to start qualifying for the hammer throw final but was instead sent home by the IAAF, the Belarus Olympic committee said Friday.

"We have received a letter from the international athletics federation that we should take out Ivan Tsikhan for doping from 2004 in Athens," said Oleg Grinko, a spokesman for the Belarus Olympic Committee.

An Olympic official with direct knowledge of the case said Tsikhan had also been caught in IAAF retests in 2005, when he won the world title in Helsinki, Finland. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the results had not been publicly announced.

The IOC decided in May to retest about 100 samples from the Athens Olympics to catch any drug cheats who escaped detection at the time.

The IOC stores doping samples from each Olympics for eight years to allow for retesting. The statute of limitations for Athens will expire Aug. 29, the date the games closed in 2004.

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Chances are you even have your favorites: "O Canada," maybe, or "La Marseillaise." But how much time have you spent thinking about them?

Sure, for "La Marseillaise," you think of the stirring scene in "Casablanca" in which the patrons of Rick's Cafe Americain rise up to drown out the hated Germans' singing. But those lyrics -- do you know they are singing, amid other sanguine images, about letting impure blood water the fields' furrows? (Fortunately, the stanza about sons and women having their throats slit is no longer sung.)

The song emerged from the bloody French Revolution, so the lyrics make some sense in context. Or, as the Massachusetts musician and educator Nat Needle observes, "I would guess you'd have to be invaded and occupied a lot (and doing your share of invading and occupying) to come up with stuff like that and have it be appealing to people."

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Gabby Douglas showed remarkable composure in winning the women’s all-around, putting enough distance between her and her competitors to keep any potential scoring controversy at bay. That fell to the bronze medal battle between Douglas’ teammate Aly Raisman and Russian Aliya Mustafina. There was a long awkward moment as the two finished in a tie for third. It only got more awkward as Raisman lost because of a new, and rather convoluted tiebreaker system. To add insult to injury, Raisman found out that she had lost, not from an official or from her coach, but from a member of the media.

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