Sebastian Coe says London is undaunted at having to follow Beijing when it hosts the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2012.

“It’s a massive responsibility,” the chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games told a news conference on the eve of the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

“We don’t find it daunting. I can only relate it to when I was sitting in a stadium when I was still a competitor watching an outstanding performance in my own event,” added the twice Olympic champion middle distance runner. 

“I didn’t feel cowed by it, I went out and wanted to emulate it or even better it… Beijing has delivered a spectacular Games and we will also deliver a spectacular Games.”

Click here to read the full story.

PHOTO: Brazil’s Lucas Prado (R) celebrates with his guide after they won the men’s 100M T11 final at the Bird’s Nest, during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Sept 9, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

Double amputee Oscar Pistorius has put the disappointment of not qualifying for the Beijing Olympics behind him and is confident of snaring three gold medals in the athletics at the Paralympics.

He is also looking forward to an attempt to make the next Olympics in London 2012.

The 21-year-old South African, dubbed the ‘Blade Runner’ because of the prosthetic legs that enable him to sprint, won a legal battle in May for the right to participate in the Olympics, only to then fail to meet the qualifying time.

“I didn’t make the Olympics this time, I’m hoping for the future,” he told me just ahead of the Paralympics.

Click here to read the full interview.

PHOTO: Pistorius runs the men’s 400 meters at the international EAA athletics meeting in Lucerne July 16, 2008. Needing a time of 45.55 seconds to qualify for the Beijing Olympics, Pistorius, 21, failed to qualify, finishing third with a personal best time of 46.25. REUTERS/Michael Buholzer

Beijing opened the Paralympic Games in spectacular fashion on Saturday, the crowd at the Bird’s Nest roaring in approval at the lavish performance overseen by renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou.

Particularly well received was a moving ballet performance by a young girl who lost a leg in May’s massive Sichuan earthquake.

Check out the photos and click here to read Ben Blanchard’s view from the Bird’s Nest…

Reuters photos by Jason Lee (top two) and Claro Cortes IV (bottom)

Standing in the reception of a Heathrow hotel watching a roll call of British gold-medal winners file past, the overriding impression was just how normal they all seemed.

There was something wonderfully natural and down-to-earth about these luminaries of Britain's finest Olympic effort in a century.

Hearing them articulate their thoughts about the last few weeks in Beijing, it was hard to avoid making comparisons with Premier League footballers.

Of course, these Olympians were relishing their moment in the sun -- whereas top-level footballers facing the media spotlight day in, day out may become understandably more guarded.

One Times writer made the point that if the rowers received "120,000 pounds a week, a team of flunkies, a 10-page spread in Hello! and more groupies than they know what to do with", they too might find their priorities blurred.

It is evident that the massive earnings of top soccer players have set them apart -- and ensured they are considered fair game for criticism by both media and fans. Yet their own behaviour -- be it snarling indiscipline on the field or excessive salary demands off it -- does not help their image either.

Some are also guilty of believing their own hype -- as evidenced by the sight of ears glittering with expensive jewellery when they pass through mixed zones after matches.

Arguably the epitome of this came at the 2006 World Cup in Germany when England's footballers shut themselves away in an exclusive Baden Baden resort. The only thing ordinary about the Golden Generation was their performance level.

For the unassuming sportsmen and women on view at Heathrow, the only gold on view was that dangling from their necks.

PHOTO: Britain's Olympic gold medallists arrive back from the Beijing at Heathrow Airport in London, Aug 25 REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

Well, not quite the Bird’s Nest, but from the Reuters office at the Main Press Centre, just down the road.

Thanks for coming by and making this blog such a lively place during the Olympics. It might not quite be the end — the blog will still be here, the comments will remain open and we may well have a few more posts on Games-related issues — but I’m on my way out of Beijing (the office is being dismantled around me, as you can see).

Thanks too to China for hosting such a great Games, and to all my colleagues from Reuters text and pictures who posted here.

If you’re just stumbling across this blog, have a scroll down, check back through previous pages and look at some of the many brilliant pieces from long before the Games started and all the way through to the end. You could while away a good few hours here if you want to relive the Olympics. 

If you’re a fan of soccer/football you may want to drop by the Reuters Soccer Blog here. Otherwise, roll on London 2012….

Kevin Fylan 

My abiding memory from these Games  will be watching Usain Bolt give everything he had to break a world record most of us had thought unbreakable.

Michael Johnson’s time of 19.32 in the 200 metres had never been seriously challenged before the Jamaican sprinter, a headline writer’s dream, decided it was finally time to get down to some serious work.

Bolt had won the 100 metres, and broken the world record, with ridiculous ease on the Saturday to set the Games alight. He was running so well that he had time to ease up well before the line and still record a commanding win.

Wednesday was different. Again, he had the race won well before the line, thanks to a brilliant bend, but there was no question of him slacking off as he hurtled down the straight. I could see him grimacing with pain as he neared the finish line before looking over to check the time.

The clock stopped on 19.31 but times are often rounded up or rounded down and there was a second or two to wait before we would find out whether he had broken Johnson’s world record or merely equalled it.

Those seconds seemed a long time for me — heaven knows what Bolt must have been feeling — but eventually the time was rounded down to 19.30. It was an incredible achievement for the Jamaican and a memory I will treasure.

This is the seventh and last in our series of Beijing snapshots — moments from the Games that will live long in the memories of all who witnessed them.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt in the 100m, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 6: Michael Phelps, by Derek Parr here.

PHOTO: Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks up at the scoreboard as he crosses the finish line to win men’s 200m final of the athletics competition in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 20, 2008. Bolt set a new world record with a timing of 19.30 seconds. REUTERS/David Gray

I’d expected the worst when I got to Beijing three weeks ago. I remember what it was like in another Communist country — East Germany with its suppressed and scared people coupled with deplorable service and shoddy quality everywhere you turned.

That’s roughly what I had in mind for China, although I knew Beijing itself would certainly be a more prosperous and modern place than East Germany, and with a bit of window dressing for the Olympics.

But China has turned out to be a lot different than I imagined. Even if it is perhaps a facade for the multitudes of foreign journalists like me getting their first taste of China, the single-most overwhelming aspect for me has been the wholehearted friendliness of the people.

I’ve been looking everywhere for that proverbial half-empty glass and the fly in my soup ever since I got here but instead have found mostly kind, helpful and friendly Chinese people who have been doing perfect 10-score back-flips to keep me and the fraternity of curmudgeon-like journalist colleagues from Seattle to Saigon happy.

I’m sure they’ve been drilled on how to be friendly and helpful to Lao Wai (foreigners) like me. The volunteers in Athens were all pretty friendly too, until the last day of the Olympics when they started ignoring my questions and the smiles disappeared. Here they haven’t stopped smiling or being helpful yet.

It doesn’t mean there haven’t been angry, tense, frustrating moments. And no one here can forget the ostracised and punished dissidents in China (you wonder why free speech runs into limits in such a powerful and proud country with so much going for it).

I’ve also had a few minor run-ins with rather inflexible local officials. But there is still no escaping the kindness, smiles and friendliness of the Chinese people everywhere you turn. It’s contagious.

Just before an interview with an athlete the other day, the battery on my tape recorder died. I turned to a local Chinese volunteer to ask if she knew where I might be able to buy, find or borrow a new one. “Sorry, no.” No worries, I told her. I’ll manage.

A few minutes later she ran over with new batteries. It was unreal. She had made it her personal mission to search the venue for a battery for me. Could anything like that happen in London in 2012?

My favourite line of the Olympics has been this one from a 22-year-old student walking on Tiananmen Square just before the opening ceremony. It sums it all up best: “My heart is bursting with excitement about the Games. I want the people to see what is special about China.”

PHOTO: Volunteers stand near targets with arrows during the men’s archery individual ranking round at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 9, 2008. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

Michael Phelps trouncing his rivals is always something fantastic to see, and here in Beijing it took your breath away to watch him so often leave everyone else for dead.

But the races which stick most vividly in my mind are the two in which gold appeared to have escaped him.

First of those was the 4×100 freestyle relay. I thought the race was lost for the U.S. when Frenchman Alain Bernard turned for the last length nearly a second up. But Jason Lezak had other ideas and snatched victory with the swim of a lifetime. I’ll never forget the sight of Phelps roaring his joy and release.

Then there was Miroslav Cavic reaching for gold in the 100 fly, only for Phelps, charging through the faster, to swing his arms over, hit the wall first in that final lunge and win by just one hundredth of a second. I’d expected Phelps to catch him earlier but thought, at the death, he’d run out of time to do it.

The next day Phelps made it eight in the medley relay and I had been lucky enough to witness each movement of his swimming symphony.

Swimming is my sporting passion. I’d been in Munich for my first Olympics in 1972 but was covering gymnastics and couldn’t get to the pool nearby to see any of Mark Spitz’s seven golden swims. Thirty-six years on, it was all the sweeter to watch Phelps take his place as arguably the greatest Olympian of them all.

I may have missed the seven but I got the eight.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the sixth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

One more to come.

PHOTO: Michael Phelps of the U.S. competes during his team’s victory in the men’s 4×100 meters medley relay swimming final during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Aquatics Centre, August 17, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

As Olympic visitors started to worry on Sunday about airport return traffic, cars in Beijing were being parked on sidewalks again.

Night clubs were open after an anti-prostitution blitz a few weeks ago. Once banished vendors scrummed on sidewalks to sell Olympic pins, the collection of which had grown to a competitive roar among locals close to the Games.

In shopping districts, you’d win gold for walking 100 metres in under an hour, a silver to stay standing amid shoves and a bronze to hear yourself talk on the phone.

China’s athletic dominance at a terrorism-free Olympics motivated celebratory locals to re-emerge into the streets over the final days of the Games, clogging venues with bodies and cars, basically returning to life as usual.

The coming-out followed a chill over Beijing orchestrated earlier this summer to reduce the risk of upsets during the country’s signature event.

“There’s a happy atmosphere now in Beijing,” said Sky Zhou, 23, a government employee, on Sunday as he joined crowds of police, military and athletes in lining up for the closing ceremonies. “Two weeks ago there was an atmosphere of anticipation.”

Before the Olympics, Beijing sent migrant workers home, removing the ubiquitous din of hammers and the smell of poured cement at construction sites. Beijing car owners can drive only on alternate days, hollowing out once gridlocked intersections the size of small sports fields.

Planes all but exceeded passengers at the normally packed Beijing airport. Chinese outside Beijing stayed home to avoid newly mandated interrogations at highway or railway checkpoints about their reasons for visiting the capital. For a while it was oddly reminiscent of the outbreak of SARS in 2003, when 2,500 people got sick in Beijing, at least 190 died and there was a ghostly feel about the city.

“The Olympic atmosphere is better than the normal one,” said university student and Games spectator Long Su, who has lived in Beijing for four years. “The construction sites have faded out, and my feeling is that Beijing has gotten cleaner.”

Riding a wave of sporting euphoria after its best Olympic performance in a century, Britain accepted Olympic host-nation status from China on Sunday with a huge street party in front of Buckingham Palace.

Owen Wyatt catches up with Olympic gold medallists Michael Phelps and Bradley Wiggins as London throbbed with 40,000 partygoers at a live concert to start the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics.