IOC President Jacques Rogge, right, hands the Olympic flag to London Mayor Boris Johnson during the closing ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on Sunday night.
BOCOG PHOTO

Curtain comes down on Beijing Olympics as baton passes to London

Monday 25th August, 07:06 AM JST

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lynny at 02:14 PM JST - 26th August

I thought Chris Hoy was one of the athlete's of the games. Kitajima didn't do too bad either. Oh yes and, Ueno was phenomenal! :D
hontodayo at 08:44 PM JST - 26th August

Is this written by an american? The leader of the the medal league wer NOT the American - it was the Chinese. Phelps, "the face of the Olympics"? Give me a break - the real hero there was, without question, Usain Bolt! What an athlete. Swimming is fun watching for a while but why so damn much? How many distances did they have? 10?!
imgold at 10:10 PM JST - 26th August

Hontodayo, you seem confused. The Americans won the "overall" medal count with 110 medals. China finished second with 100. And please, don't go into the "values" argument. If the Gold was all that was important then the International Olympic Committee would award only one medal !

The face of these Olympics is definitly Michael Phelps ! 8 medals, the most in history, and the class and integrity of a true champion. Usain Bolt, for all his ability, was actually warned by the head of the Olympics to stop the showboating and show more respect to his sport and competition. Ignoring his competitors at the end of every race to congratulate himself and mug for the cameras is hardly the image the Chinese or IOC want representing the "face of the Beijing Olympics" !

It will be interesting to see if Phelps competes in London. Simply the best Olympian of the modern era needs to go out and do it one more time, for history's sake !
Sarge at 10:15 PM JST - 26th August

"British pop singer Leona Lewis, who sang Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love' with Jimmy Page on guitar"

Where the hell was Robert Plant?
Nessie at 12:11 AM JST - 27th August

Sarge, he was vegging out at home.
croscris at 07:09 AM JST - 27th August

Any of you watched Japanese TV coverage of the Olympics? If you did, you'd think that NBC's coverage was very fair and balanced. Japanese media either have really small hearts or they really hate China. You don't see a single second of Chinese athlete's performance for last 2 weeks. Well, that wasn't a surprise. I've seen how they covered last 4 olympics. Although NBC almost made it like Michael Phelps' Olympics but you see a lot performance from other country's athletes including Chinese specially in diving, gymnastics and I think a lot of their reports were not biased. While in Japan, most reports about China and Beijing Olympics were negative. If you read messages posted on Yahoo Japan, quite a lot people there were actually hoping it turn into some sort of disaster. It has been quite annoying watching Olympics or any kind of international sports on Japanese media.
hontodayo at 09:19 AM JST - 27th August

imgold, give me a big break. Americans love to portray themselves as the overall winners of medals. The only problem is that according to Olympic standards, a gold is more worth than a silver. Something everbody, except of course the Am's, agree on. Check out the Olympic homepage and see who's on top of that list. That's the only thing that counts. For you enlightenment, Bolt was not at all "warned" by Jaques Rogge! He simply made a comment in an interview that he didn't like his style.
freakashow at 11:11 AM JST - 27th August

croscris, read this article for more comments about the NBC debacle:

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourthplacemedal/post/NBC-withholding-live-Olympic-events-from-west-co?urn=oly,99683

In particular, you should reader the many comments from Americans all across the nation. It seems that it was all about money and politics. True, there were a lot of coverage of Chinese athletes, but very little in the way of other countries. I would've loved to seen more of the little known sports we don't hear so much about, like the modern day pentathlon, or fencing, but all we got was Phelps and Chinese athletes. Oh, and a lot of commercials. Of course, none of this was live on the West Coast. Here's hoping that London does a better job of it in 2012. I'm glad that the "baton" was not dropped in this one.
boobug at 05:04 PM JST - 27th August

Seems like London is already under seige. Western media reports indicate the chinese are upset at the way the Brits' Boris Johnson conducted himself at the closing ceremony. Gaffe #1, walking to the stage with left hand firmly implanted in left coat pocket. Gaffe #2, failing to button or close the suit jacket. Hey at least his fly wasn't open. Gaffe #3, grabbing the sacred Olympic flag in one hand and hoisting it about like a drunken wino !

I personally had no issues with the way the Mayor acted, typical british eccentric, a little off his rocker in an innocent kind of way. But the chinese have labled his behaviour rude and disrespectful. Looks like the show has just begun and the British have already stepped in it. Good luck London, you are going to need all the help you can get.
imgold at 11:07 PM JST - 27th August

I can't help but wonder if the BBC will be able to live up to the exceptional performance put on by NBC. Latest Neilsen results show that Americans were more than just pleased with the coverage, they were ecstatic ! Headlines at this mornings USA Today boldly state,

"Nielsens: Olympics on NBC capture ratings gold !"

"•Olympic jump. NBC's 17-day coverage of the Beijing Olympics averaged 27.7 million viewers in prime time, surpassing the 2004 Athens Summer Games (24.6 million viewers) by 13% and the 2000 Sydney Games (21.6 million) by 28%. Sunday's coverage of the Beijing closing ceremonies beat Athens by 42% (27.8 million vs. 19.6 million) and Sydney by 66% (16.7 million). NBC is claiming the title of the "most-watched event in U.S. history" for Beijing, based on total audience for network and cable: 214 million viewers."

Now those are some heady numbers, especially for those here that continue to speak ill of the "peacock" ! I sometimes worry about the BBC. It took them almost 3 years to finally realize that George Bush did indeed win the presidential race !
freakashow at 12:21 PM JST - 28th August

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourthplacemedal/post/NBC-withholding-live-Olympic-events-from-west-co?urn=oly,99683

Nice comment:

"NBC has again snatched defeat from he jaws of victory for us West Coasters. I will cut back my viewing and search for new media feeds" - Roger B

An even better one:

"We're trying to watch beach volleyball and have missed several points because NBC keeps interrupting its coverage to show commercials! And - they are political commercials, which we certainly don't need to see during the Olympics." - Mary R

Touche, touche:

"NBC is really doing a horrible job on covering the Olympics. Every 10 minutes they cut to Coca Cola or Visa commercials. Thank God for Yahoo, I don't have to give NBC ratings. **** NBC!" - Jeff H
freakashow at 12:33 PM JST - 28th August

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourthplacemedal/post/NBC-withholding-live-Olympic-events-from-west-co?urn=oly,99683

More quotes from this blog titled:

"NBC withholding live Olympic events from west coast viewers" Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:13 am EDT from the Yahoo! Sports Fourth Place Medal blog:

"NBC shows a wonderful formula on why American television is so damned horrible. Commercials in the middle of the opening ceremony??? Tape Delay and editing of the events??? Not showing as many sports as you can on the MULTIPLE channels you own??? No immediate replays or looping of your program??? " - SamF

"Yeah, I haven't caught a single glimpse of events I'd like to see in Los Angeles, because everything is on tape-delay. I hang-tough to watch TONS of matches for the World Cup when I lived in Tokyo, but this tape-delay thing has me recalling tough mornings, when I'd cover my ears in an elevator, as people talked of the teams that won going "Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, I'm not going to listen to thisssss" as I had it on tape...(only in this case DVR). It's ridiculous, nonsensical, and shows how major corporations like NBC view an East-Coast persona (Along with the government, nightly news, Yankees orginazation) view the West Coast as "secondary". Fact from the East, fiction (Burbank) from the West. It's wrong and should be changed. We're not "lazy fans, getting tans in the sun, and occasionally tuning in", and that perception just shows right through in NBC's coverage of the Olympics, and that is sad. They should really change it. " - Dougie

"NBC is horrible. I am so tired of the "fuzzy warm" back stories on the athletes. The internet coverage is better but still, not all events are available. Also, the GE commercials interupt the events. I was unable to see the finish of a rowing race because I had to watch a commercial about turbines. Lets hope the 2010 winter olympics are live as they are in Vancouver. I wonder if NBC can handle that." - Brent L
kenchan at 07:50 AM JST - 30th August

as for Boris...I'm living in London and am not a fan of Boris at all. My initial reaction was of annoyance as I thought he was doing his typical idiotic actions. After finding out that he had indeed cleared his (button) attire with the IOC prior to the ceremony then I take it back. No-one should complain is its OK'ed by the people who run the show.
rajakumar at 08:04 AM JST - 30th August

30th olympiad london2012, 1427 days to go.

London must do better than beijing in hosting this 28 disciplnes competition. It is all about discipline, definitely london's discipline will go up in 2012.
Skywards at 04:11 AM JST - 1st September

Could not understand the choice of such an old song to promote the next summer Games-UK has a happening dance/techno music scene, so why wasn't it represented? The bus scenario to introduce the London Games worked splendidly, along with the soccer connection (hey, we watched Euro Cup). The aircraft staircase sequence using the scroll motif from Beijing to connect to the London Games was a good bridge.

Closing ceremonies-nice touch, to have men's marathon medal ceremony included. Also great, seeing Asian singers in the last 5 songs of the finale.