Beijing signs off with another awesome display, next stop London 2012

But for China, these Games have been as much about the staging of them as for the medal haul. China was keen to host them, and seven years ago made pledges to get them and asserted its ambitions for rapid development in preparing for them. The ledger on that score will be scrutinized by policy analysts and the rest of the world still trying to get an understanding of what the rapid rise of China means, and what it will make of that rise internationally and domestically.

When was the last time the rest of world so carefully tracked the Games for their political sideshow, and when was the last time that a host nation went to such amazing lengths to stage the perfect Games?

At least London, with its handover performance, showed that Yimou’s pageantry is not likely to matched four years from now. With a tacky backdrop of the Red London Doubledecker, it nonetheless got the stadium ecstatic with Jimmy Page’s appearance.

Less cinematic in its ambition and imagery than the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony ceded space to that most touching of Olympic gestures. The march past of nations of the opening ceremony being replaced by the mixing any which way of athletes on the ground, the colours of separateness bleeding into each other, as Pico Iyer put it once.