Set the dials to 'Peachy'

OK, credit where it's due - that secret weather machine of theirs really came up with the goods over the last 3 days of the Olympics. (Or maybe it was just that we had a light breeze out of the north dispelling the humidity and the cloud cover? Mind you, I wouldn't put it past the authorities here - given their expertise for marshalling the mass movement of their citizens - to have lined up a few million peasants around the northern suburbs of the city and got them all to exhale steadily in the direction of Tiananmen. Was that a whiff of stale garlic and cheap cigarettes we smelt on that wind??) Sunday was just gorgeous, sublime, perfect - one of the loveliest days I have ever seen here.

I had predicted a while back that no-one was going to break any outdoor records at this Olympics, at least not in any of the endurance events - but in yesterday's Marathon, both the winner, Samuel Gansiru, and the silver medallist, the Moroccan Gharib, bettered Carlos Lopes' 24-year-old Olympic record, and got pretty close to Haile Gebreselassie's world record (the Ethiopian had, of course, declined to participate in this race because of concerns about the air quality here). Gansiru didn't even look particularly tired at the end of it. I think I hate him.

The men were better served than the women for this event: the temperature was starting to push up into the 80s by the time they finished, but there was a hint of a refreshing breeze and only middling humidity - very nearly ideal conditions. A week ago, when the women ran, it was a little cooler, but rather drably overcast and intensely humid - and the air quality was therefore almost certainly way worse too (the API yesterday was pretty good; officially only 45).

Even though we got good weather and vastly reduced air pollution for most of the outdoor competitions in the second week, I suspect that this year's Olympians must have been suffering somewhat from Beijing's notoriously crappy air quality. The weather (and air quality) in the first week of the Games was mostly fairly grim, and the week before they started was just abysmal - that must have inhibited many people's training regimes.

But hey, no major harm done, it would seen. These African chaps can still nail 26 miles in close to 2 hours, and make it look as easy as a stroll around the block. And whether it was dumb luck or stupendously sophisticated micro-management of the climate, we should all be very grateful for such glorious days as the ones we've just seen. I just wonder how much longer it can last.....