The ceremony is over. Now it's time for sport to take its rightful place

To say there was growing anticipation and a sense of impatience for history to unfold was a gold-medal understatement. Long before the spectators, it was the restless international and mainland media who were the first to enter the Bird's Nest, hours before last night's opening ceremony.

They were fast-tracked through security and took their seats to swelter in the heat and haze and reflect on their reams of words and galleries of pictures over the past seven years.

The moment of reckoning was nearly upon them. Had they called it right? Would this be the best Games ever?

At any Olympics, the opening ceremony is part carnival and part tell-tale as to the state of the mind of the athletes for the sports reporters. How and with whom do they walk during the parade? Are they looking confident? Where is so-and-so, and so forth, whirls the mind.

But even the purist hammer-thrower reporter or kayak correspondent could not keep his or her mind on the stats book. So like others, they folded the albums, placed them in the bag and heeded the call of history-in-the-making.

They walked with the other Olympic pilgrims to this inspiring temple to modernity, this key symbol of 21st century China - a stadium that will over the next 16 days be a temporary Mecca to sport fans.