It’s now over. Fears of pollution, human rights issues and protests taking over the Olympics never materialised. The Chinese pulled it off grand style, making the 2008 olympics theirs, and in those three weeks, owning it, in terms of sporting performance and the way the whole Olympic affair was executed from start to finish. It was truly wonderful.
Not only did China host the Olympics but they set themselves high standards in the different sporting events- participating in virtually all the events, with the hope of topping the medals table. And they did that too. Even though the Americans had more medals in total, China took over the top spot in the gold medal slot, and in so doing broke the hold of the Americans on the medal table since the fall of the Soviet Union.