When covering a major sporting event in a developing country, you obsess over the promised legacies as you do the winners and losers. Most of the Beijing 2008 promises made by the International Olympic Committee and Bocog (the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) were kept, others clearly broken.
Beijing's infrastructure made quantum leaps and the Chinese showed the world their awe-inspiring work ethic and hospitality, and sporting prowess.
The first former Soviet bloc countries to host the Euros have splashed out almost US$39 billion on preparations - US$25 billion in Poland and US$14 billion in Ukraine. When asked what the legacies would be, Uefa president Michel Platini said: new highways, renovated hotels, high-speed railways and spanking new stadiums in the eight venue cities. '[The] legacy will be felt in those countries for years to come,' he said.
The stadiums are living up to the hype. And the roads in Poland will be great once they are finished, and that will be a while yet; the express trains remain deathly slow - maintenance, apparently - and the hotels, if they have been renovated, require a small mortgage to stay in. More of this insane overcharging in a later post because the legions of extortionists deserve special mention.
Having just stepped out of my Land Rover after another stunning and demanding drive to make one half of the group B climax in Lviv, transport is key. Take the infamous autostrada A2 in Poland, which has its own Wikipedia page. Nothing odd in that, as many roads warrant a special mention. The Silk Road, or the Beijing 5th Ring Road - a terrific way to travel so long as you do so between 2am and 4am when most Beijingers are asleep. And of course, the mother of them all, the M25 - London's orbital, which to many is a gridlocked treadmill going nowhere.
No, the A2 is special because it links Poland to the heart of Europe, and is fashioned in German autobahn-style. It was completed a day before the opening ceremony, but not before my arrival and I was abruptly diverted onto the old single carriageway 40 kilometres outside of the Polish capital. That last stretch took nearly two hours to complete and induced nightmares.