25/08/2008 12:13 AM
In a century's time when sporting historians are still dissecting the details of the Beijing Olympics they will talk about the stance of an archer, the curious slapping of the head, the surreal celebrations.
They will talk about two world records, 9.69 secs and 19.30 secs, for athletics' main sprints, 100m and 200m, and the share of a 4x100m relay world record for good measure.
They will talk about a 6ft 5ins athlete from Jamaica, with a geeky gait and an eccentric nature, called Usain Bolt.
They will talk about Bolt as they still do about Jesse Owens, who smashed Adolf Hitler's notion of Aryan supremacy at the 1936 Games.
As they still do about Carl Lewis and his mesmeric effect on the Games in Los Angeles in 1984.
Bolt did not win the long jump as well as the premier sprints in the manner of Owens and Lewis but his presence was even more dramatic.
Forget the curmudgeons, including IOC president Jacques Rogge, who criticised his showboating antics.
The truth is, if the opening ceremony delivered a proud and spectacular message to the world, then Bolt was the heartbeat of the Beijing Games. A large and colourful personality.
More so than American swimmer Michael Phelps who won eight gold medals in the Water Cube pool, eclipsing the seven golds won by Mark Spitz in Munich in 1972.
That is a colossal achievement, especially as Phelps now has 14 Olympic golds to his name, including the six he won in Athens, to make him by some distance the most bemedalled Olympian in history.
But swimming, with its multitude of similar events which all suit one body type, does not have the range or the profile of track and field. Nor does it place the same pressures on the body.
Phelps was magnificent, even if the gold he garnered in the 100m butterfly will always go down as the phantom gold, the one which television cast doubt upon since Serbia's Milorad Cavic clearly touched the wall first but was timed at one hundredth of a second behind the American.
Conspiracy theories abounded. Was the timing faulty? Did officials want their record-breaking swimming superstar a little too much?
None of which will taint Phelps' legend and such was his achievement that in a hundred years' time there is every chance he will still be the most medalled Olympian.
Great deeds. Dramatic stories. Pain and euphoria. These are what shape Olympic Games and the hush which descended on the Bird's Nest stadium when Chinese 110m hurdling icon Liu Xiang limped out before the start will live long in the memory.
But not nearly as long as the sight of the Union Jack being hoisted up flagpoles all over China.
What great expectation that brings for London in four years' time.
Because if Bolt was the heartbeat of these Games then Britain was the adrenalin-fuelled, born-again sporting nation, one which sprang unexpectedly to mix it with the Olympic big boys such as Russia, Australia, the USA and China.
From the moment Nicole Cooke set the wheels in motion with gold in the women's road race against the backdrop of the Great Wall of China, Britain was scaling heights it had not reached for 100 years.
There is no need to mention all 47 medallists, nor to trawl through every one of the 19 gold medals. The Olympic spirit of courage and determination was