Why does it always have to be about medals?

ON THE GAMES:THE WORLD'S most populated country was last night reduced to one heartfelt moment of pride when realising it had, as promised, delivered the most spectacular and memorable Olympics of all time. All 1.3 billion of you, take a bow.

As the Olympic flame was gently extinguished inside the iconic Bird's Nest, news that China had indeed topped the medal table was still spreading across this vast landscape from the wide Mongolian border to the great Tibetan Plateau. There won't be any cows milked in China this morning.

The Closing Ceremony, amazingly, had concluded with the surprise appearance of Bob Dylan on the infield stage, leading a chorus of his old 1960s tune Chimes of Freedom.

Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones

Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

Earlier, Wada released a statement claiming there wasn't a single positive doping test over the past 16 days, despite the extraordinary number of world records. They added, however, that all tests were being stored for eight years for further examination, including the pending test for performance-enhancing parents.

The Games, we all agreed, were a slow-enough start, but after some casual foreplay, the cut and thrusting of the track-and-field events proved impossible to resist and provided countless orgasmic highlights. Among these, for sure, was witnessing Liu Xiang being awarded the gold medal after the 110-metre hurdles, despite the fact he had actually finished second.

Although the much-vaunted Irish medal hope never materialised, we should be proud of our performances. Ireland is now a fading blip on the Olympic radar, and the sooner we realise that, and reassess our expectations, the better. Just because our athletes are coming home without a medal doesn't mean we should disown them for another four years.

The truth is, all 16 athletes, with possibly one or two exceptions, gave the performance of their lives here in Beijing, or at least one they won't ever forget.

How can you forget an Olympic experience? It becomes a part of you for the rest of your life, like that tattoo of a fire-belching dragon I got painted across my chest last week at a small parlour off Tiananmen Square.

The tattoo artist told me, in somewhat broken English, that it was a "very, old, old" design. At least that's what I thought he said. Although in fairness, his English was a lot better than my Chinese.

But I digress. The point I was trying to make was that Irish athletes nearly always get a hard time if they come home from a major championships without a medal, and it shouldn't be this way. Why can't we be satisfied with a fourth-place finish? Or a finalist in a sprint event? Or even a finisher in what was the most brutal Olympic marathon ever? Why does it have to be medals, medals, medals the whole time?

First of all, it was damn rough out here. Leaving the Hotel Tibet every morning was like walking straight into China's biggest steel furnace, the one that employs 300,000 people. I went for a short run on my arrival and ended up so chronically dehydrated that I haven't taken a leak since, despite consuming countless litres of Tsingtao.

Secondly, the pressure inside the Bird's Nest each night was practically unbearable, with all 91,000 spectators screaming hysterically even when nothing was actually happening on the track. Some of them were seen fainting when events did get under way, and we can only assume they weren't faking it.

From the outset, the Irish athletes laid down a marker, particularly when Róisín McGettigan and Fionnuala Britton took off in tandem, Kenyan-like, at the start of the 3,000-metre steeplechase. Okay, they finished outside the medals, but running 3,000 metres over dozens of barriers and several water jumps in brick-oven conditions is not for the faint-hearted.

There was already enormous pressure on Eileen O'Keeffe in the hammer. Ireland has a wonderful tradition in Olympic throwing, but it had all but disappeared before she came along, and O'Keeffe is now single-handedly carrying it on. Still, some people wouldn't have been satisfied unless she became the first person in history to throw the hammer outside the walls of the Olympic stadium.

Same with Robbie Heffernan in the 20-kilometre walk. He may well be the most dedicated athlete in Ireland, and just because he didn't run away with the walk doesn't mean he's a failure. Heffernan is cut from the same cloth as Roy Keane, and almost as respected in his event.

Over the past two years, David Gillick has taken Irish 400-metre running into truly world-class territory. His Irish record of 45.12 would have won every Olympic 400-metre final up to and including Melbourne, 1956. Sometimes I wonder where the hell he got his great talent from, but I just know it wasn't out of a medicine bottle.

What else can be said about Paul Hession? He's helping to convince the world that white man can sprint just as fast as black men.

So, as the Olympic circus is taken down for another four years, we should let all our Irish athletes take a bow as well.

They've done enough to ensure that when youngsters all around the country return to school next week, some will go running into the yard at lunchtime and think to themselves, "Some day, I want to run in the Olympics", which is one of the most important reasons why the whole Olympic circus went up in the first place.