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BEIJING - To the roar of pyrotechnics over the Bird's Nest, the symbol of a new China, and a simultaneously timed circle of yet more fireworks over Tianmen Square in central Beijing, the 2008 Summer Games drew Sunday night to a close, an Olympics that in virtually every regard made history.

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The Games came to the end of their 17-day run after a ceremony -- a party, really -- featuring bouncing and flying men, drum carts, rotating poles, light wheels precisely 2.008 meters in diameter and 1,148 silver bell-wearing dancers in yellow dresses, all of it a lead-up to the entry of the athletes of the world, who by tradition on the night of closing ceremony mingled together, without regard to nationality, in the center of the stadium.

The palette of colors on the field, the rousing lights around and above - all of that in turn served as mere prelude to the moment when the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, the stadium suddenly so hushed the hiss of the gas feeding the huge flame above the Bird's Nest rim clearly audible.

And then it was gone.

These Games, perhaps the most memorable Summer Olympics since the Games were reborn in Athens in 1896, were over.

"These were truly exceptional Games!" International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge declared from the center of the stadium. Unlike his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, Rogge does not describe one Games or another as "best ever."

It was clear what was at issue here from the outset -- the very first drumbeats at the opening ceremony on Aug. 8 serving notice of China's arrival among the front ranks of the nations of the world, a station Chinese athletes emphatically underscored over the next two weeks, their performance topping the gold-medal chart, with 51.

Moreover, these 2008 Games established on several fronts benchmarks against which successive editions of the Olympics are sure to be measured.

The venues were first-rate, several architectural marvels. The buses ran on time. Pollution-related concerns ultimately played no part in the sports schedule. And the thousands of blue-shirted volunteers could not have been more friendly, polite and welcoming -- even when, as was frequently the case, the language barrier proved formidable.

"What is clear is that Beijing has had a huge positive impact on the Olympics," said Michael Knight, the former Olympics minister in Australia who oversaw the wildly successful Sydney Games in 2000.

"In the next few years," Knight said, "it will become clearer just how much impact the Olympics has had on China."

From the moment the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing in 2001, these Games attracted controversy like no other, activists using the onset of the Games to call attention to human rights abuses within China, the political situation in Tibet, the conflict in Darfur -- and a range of other issues.

The focus on such politically charged controversies remained strong until the Aug. 8 ceremony. And then dimmed almost immediately, the spotlight switching to sports - the crowds at the pool, at the track and elsewhere bearing witness to history in the making.

At the futuristic Water Cube, Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, topping Mark Spitz's record of seven at one Olympics, from Munich in 1972. Phelps also set seven world records. "I've dreamed of a lot of things, I've written down a lot of goals - this," Phelps said after winning the eighth, "was the biggest one I ever really wrote down." 

On the track, Usain Bolt of Jamaica ran three races, won all three and set three world records. In running 9.69 seconds to win the marquee race of any Olympics, the 100m, Bolt became the first man in the annals of recorded history to run the distance at that speed without a significant tailwind.

Rogge on Sunday called Phelps and Bolt the "two icons of the Games."

Kerri Walsh and Misty Misty May-Treanor became the first pair, male or female, to repeat as Olympic champions in beach volleyball.

Abhinav Bindra of India won that nation's first gold medal, in shooting. His medal marked India's first gold since 1980.

Kenya's Samy Wanjiru won the marathon Sunday morning - the first gold in the marathon for Kenya, with a proud tradition of winning gold in other distance events dating to Kip Keino and the 1968 Mexico City Games.

The 51-count Chinese gold-medal tally was driven in part by the host nation's men's and women's gymnastics lineups, both of which claimed team gold.

The women's competition took part under the shadow of allegations that some of the Chinese competitors, including uneven bars champion He Kexin, had not turned 16 during this Olympic year, per the sport's eligibility rules.

Chinese officials have denied any misconduct.

In one of the final events of the Games, an emotional capstone to the U.S. effort, the American men's indoor volleyball team won gold by defeating Brazil in four sets. Just two weeks ago, at the start of the Games, the father-in-law of U.S. coach Hugh McCutcheon had been stabbed to death in Beijing.

The U.S. team won the overall medal count, with 110.

That surpassed the total from the Barcelona Games, 108, which had been the most-ever won by a U.S. team at a non-boycotted Olympics.

The U.S. gold-medal total, 36, matched the American count from Athens in 2004.

The way Olympic medals work, a medal for a team sport - such as the golds each of the men on the volleyball team was awarded Sunday - counts as just one.

If, instead, the medals awarded to each individual are counted, the totals underscore the American commitment to team sports. They read like this:

Americans: 315 medals.

Chinese: 186.

So both the Chinese and the Americans got what they wanted at these 2008 Beijing Games - the USOC also able to claim a doping-free American team and first-rate conduct from Aug. 8 on from the American delegation, highlighted by visits from the likes of basketball stars Kobe Bryant to the pool and Jason Kidd to women's beach volleyball.

Rogge had predicted as many as 40 positive doping tests at the 2008 Games - based on the 12 positive tests from the 2000 Sydney Games, 26 in Athens in 2004.

As of Sunday, with tests completed thru Wednesday's competitions, the total stood at a mere six, the most notable silver medal-winning Russian heptathlete Liudmyla Blonska; American Hyleas Fountain was moved up from bronze to silver.

In the month before the opening of the athletes' village, 39 athletes from all around the world were caught in positive tests, Rogge noted Sunday, saying, "You have also to count that in the fight against doping."

The U.S. effort included a dozen athletes who have been voluntarily submitting to extra blood and urine tests in a bid to prove each is doping free - among them Phelps and decathlon champion Bryan Clay.

Overall, said Jim Scherr, the USOC's chief executive, "We consider this one of our most successful engagements in the Olympic Games, ever."

Just how notable a success this was won't be fully measurable for years and years. But as the athletes of the world decamp from Beijing, it was abundantly clear Chinese authorities saw these Olympics as a most successful engagement, too.

Wang Wei, a senior Beijing 2008 organizing committee official, said, "As Confucius, China's most esteemed philosopher and educator told us 2,000 years ago, 'How very glad we are to welcome friends from afar.'

"... We have lived up to our commitments to these Games and we are pleased to have welcomed so many friends from around the world to Beijing - to celebrate the greatness of sport and humanity and to witness the changes that the Olympics has brought to this Olympic host city."