"It is," Victoria Derbyshire told listeners to Radio 5 Live on the day of the opening ceremony, "the first total Olympics." She was referring to BBC coverage: on television, 24 live streams in addition to several channels; on radio, rather more modestly, one new "pop-up" station, 5 Live Olympics, broadcasting digitally alongside 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra.

Not all listeners are convinced that such extended radio coverage is needed, given that 5 Live is already dedicated in large part to sport. "It's an orgy of self-interest," one grumped in an email. If not an orgy, it's certainly a generously laden smorgasbord, with the three stations broadcasting 75 hours of live coverage of 23 sports over the first weekend of the Games. 5 Live covers the main events and news from the Olympics, flitting between sports and stories; 5 Live Olympics commentates on other sports for longer, with overnight highlights of each day; and Sports Extra is home to the rest of sport for the duration.

It's impressive so far. The coverage has breadth and depth, passion and knowledge, but during the Games, radio also has a key advantage over the behemoth that is the televisual operation. 5 Live, while extending its sports output, retains the station's core, everyday appeal (immediacy, eclecticism, accessibility, sense of humour, interaction with listeners) and personality.

So, some of its best-known presenters appear on a re-jigged schedule, notably Victoria Derbyshire and Mark Chapman (10am–2pm), and Peter Allen and Colin Murray (2–6.30pm). All four, knowing their audience supremely well, are at ease and sound gleefully excited to be on-air. Derbyshire, watching the beach volleyball ("Wow. Oh my goodness!") even slipped into singing along with a brass-band version of Lionel Ritchie's All Night Long; not something you can imagine her doing on her daily show.

Murray and Allen are terrific together; a soft-and-hard-cop duo, a yin-yang of boundless puppy-dog enthusiasm and an older dog who hardly needs to learn any new tricks. As the saga of empty seats unfolded, Murray repeatedly tried to nudge discussion on to happier topics. "You be Mr Positive," Allen told Murray, "and I'll be Mr Slightly Negative."

There are inevitably limitations of what radio commentary can do. Some sports are so quick there's barely time to describe them as they happen. "And now they jump, now they dive and now they hit the water" doesn't quite capture the poetry of synchronised diving. And some sports, such as dressage, are fiendishly tricky to put into words. "It is a very detailed sport to observe," said one commentator with some understatement.

But radio paints pictures and evokes atmosphere with an intimacy that television can't match. Alongside the headlines and medals, radio captures the tiny details of key moments, and the feeling of being there.

Tony Livesey, broadcasting his late-night show from a different place in London each night, looked over the city from a pod in the London Eye and marvelled at the beauty of the view. He sounded momentarily mesmerised, and then went back to being the funny, down-to-earth, hard-to-dazzle presenter he is every night. As Team GB won its first-ever Olympic volleyball match close to 1am, someone in the pod quipped that his grandchildren would ask Livesey where he had been when it happened. "Looking down on the bird droppings on the House of Commons," he replied.