The greatest Games ever
Performers take part in the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing last night after the Olympic flame was extinguished
Something forlorn and regrettable happened here last night. The greatest Olympics we have ever seen - and perhaps ever will - came to an end.
It was hard not to feel sympathy for Boris Johnson last night when he was handed perhaps the heaviest baton ever passed on in organised sport.
The Mayor of London, plainly conscious that he was standing in the gaze of the world, threw up so many hearty salutes to Olympic and Chinese government dignitaries -- and even one young volunteer -- that you worried that he had mistaken the closing ceremony of the 29th Summer Games for a passing out parade at Sandhurst.
However, he accepted the Olympic flag with some reverence, carefully unfurling it before waving it in traditional fashion.
When the old rocker Jimmy Page, east-end pop star Leona Lewis and Leytonstone native David Beckham emerged from a gleaming-red London bus to the welcoming cheers of 91,000 spectators in the Birds' Nest stadium in Beijing, there was no doubt that London had cleverly pitched its call to the stage as host of the 2012 Olympics.
Implicit in the eight-minute handover sequence was that if London was to succeed, it would do so on its own terms -- and its vastly inferior budget.
It couldn't host better Games than Beijing, not in terms of scale and staging and faultless organisation, but it could be distinctively different, and maybe a little more relaxed in its welcome to the world as one of the great cosmopolitan cities.
However, none of this made it less of a wrench for anyone who loves sport to bid farewell to Beijing.
For two seamless weeks charged with drama and sometimes terrible poignancy -- along with 38 world and 85 Olympic records -- it has been as though sport found its soul again.
Everywhere you went you found a competition that seemed to matter more than you could ever remember.
In every corner of the Games, not just the showpiece spectacles, this was evident.
Memories
The best men of the Games, Jamaica's world-record shattering sprinter Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps -- to name just two competitors -- ensured the they would stand out in spectators' memories forever for their incredible achievements.
Phelps, who employed his giant Condor wingspan in his successful pursuit of a record eight gold medals in one Olympics -- and a staggering accumulation of 14 in two Olympics, became, statistically at least, the greatest Olympian of all time.
Jacques Rogge, the Belgian president of the International Olympic Committee, was obliged like all his predecessors to make grateful noises to the hosts when he stepped up to the microphone, but over the years there has developed a form of presidential language that has carefully avoided comparing one Olympics to another.
The old formula announcing the best-ever Olympics every four years was necessarily scrapped by Rogge's predecessor Juan Antonio Samaranch after the disaster of Atlanta in 1996, a grisly mix of crass commercialism and failed security.
Four years ago Rogge thanked Athens for 'dream games', which covered everything, including huge budget over-rides and the nightmare scandal of the Greek star sprinters running, literally, away from drug testers.
Last night, though, Rogge was unambiguous in his praise of China's extraordinary effort to make great games.
The IOC president declared: "Tonight we come to the end of 16 glorious days which we will cherish forever. Thank you to the people of China; through these Games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world. Athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees came to these dazzling venues and awed us with their talent. These were truly exceptional games."
The lawyer from Brussels, an ex-Olympic rower, could have gone further, even for those of us weary of the years of double-speak and compromise and manipulation that that has so often marked Olympic politics.
He could have said that these were indeed the greatest Olympics of all time. (© Independent News Services)
- James Lawton in Beijing
