Beijing The air turned an eerie white four days before the opening ceremony, then became a murky haze that hung over this city for a week.
The Chinese still chalked up some of those sunless days in the "blue sky" category, according to their measurements of air pollution, which was one of the reasons to wonder if a clear picture of the 2008 Summer Games would ever emerge.
The sky actually went blue in the middle of the first week of competition, the sun came out almost every other day, and the Beijing Olympics wound up looking as most expected.
They were a triumph for a people and a government determined to show their skill and confidence, as both athletes and organizers, to a world that once treated China as a weak, servile nation.
China won the most gold medals, hardly a surprise when a country of 1.3 billion people commits enormous resources to achieving its goal. China also built sports venues that combined gargantuan scale and striking architecture in a way no previous Olympic host could afford.
China carried off these Olympics with no organizational snarls, no doped Chinese athletes and no qualms about creating virtual reality -- flags blown by fake wind, computer-enhanced fireworks for TV -- to enhance an artificial image of perfection.
Yet the images the sports world will remember most from China's coming-out tribute to itself -- the Games lacked the spontaneity to be a party -- were those of foreigners: a U.S. swimmer, Michael Phelps, who could hang a record eight gold medals around his neck; and a Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt, who rejected a TV commentator's description of him as "Superman 2."
"I'm Lightning Bolt," he said. And who would disagree after watching Bolt break world records in all three of his events, the 100 and 200 meters and the 400 relay?
"The two icons of the Games were Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Sunday -- when Rogge chose for the second time in a week, inexplicably, to diminish the Jamaican by saying he had not shown enough respect for his rivals.
Rogge could crow about increased Olympic TV ratings, especially in the United States, where the live-in-East-Coast-prime-time successes of Phelps and gymnast Nastia Liukin made NBC look brilliant for insisting that finals of those events take place in the Beijing morning.
