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Peter Simpson

Oh, to be a fly on the wall beside Jacques Rogge's first-class seat  as his aircraft leaves Beijing today.
The air has been so clear  he'll be able to spot   the Olympic Green below and the Bird's Nest and Water Cube - just two of the arenas that have dazzled the world  these past 17 days. Aircraft, with their soothing jet engine-hum, are an ideal setting for reflection.
'Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on Usain Bolt and his celebrations,' you can imagine  Rogge saying to himself.
As the plane flies out of China airspace,  perhaps he will loosen his tie and close his eyes to marvel at the feat of Michael Phelps and the rise of China and their remarkable Olympians.
He'll again shake his head in quiet wonderment at the amazing facilities the hosts built.
Reaching the Mongolian steppe and Russian border, and accepting a refill from a smiling stewardess, he might reflect on the seven years he has spent dealing with organisers, Bocog.
'Good people in a difficult position ... tasked to do so much, and fulfilling their promises ... though I wish they had not broken the Internet one'  go  his thought patterns. 'But a fantastic job ... I wish all organising committees were, well, similar ...'
In his mind's eye perhaps he sees a thousand smiling volunteers in their blue uniform - and this image gets caught in a loop ... 'Thanks you for your co-operation! Thanks for your co-operation ... Thanks for your co-operation!'
He wakes with a small start to find the stewardess    serving him a fine cut of beef.  Perhaps he also chews over the great gamble he and the IOC took in bringing the Games to China, and how the country has 'raised the bar'.
'Has the Olympics changed China?' he might muse as he spears a baby carrot.
'Too early to say. But China has changed the Olympics ... Goodness me,' he chortles to himself 'have they changed the Olympics ... Wow! 'What will London have to do to match that, let alone better it? Anyway, at least that Boris gentlemen, the funny London mayor, didn't drop the Olympic flag. Boy, what do you make of him ...?'
As a former Olympic sailor, Rogge might well reflect on British glory - not just down in Qingdao, but all over the venues.
'The Brits are back - good for them. Perfect lift for Locog ... Good job, too, otherwise that media of theirs would be all over them even before the flag arrives back.'
The president perhaps ignores the  ice-cream with summer fruits, and instead asks for coffee. He unwraps the small Belgium chocolate and continues his contemplation of the 29th Olympiad.
'Why the hell did Kevan [Gosper, the IOC press commission] have to go and make such a dog's breakfast over the internet censorship thingy at the start?' Rogge might think, in a rare moment of light annoyance.
Forgiveness, however, comes quickly as the fine chocolate - a taste of home - melts on his taste buds.
'Why can't the rest of the IOC members just realise the media always makes a noise and flaps about.  The sport always takes over and everyone soon forgets human rights, smog and all the other politics stuff,' he thinks.
'I just hope those girl gymnasts are of the legal age, for China's sake ...'
The last press conference of Beijing 2008 - the final one of many throughout his seven years of dealing with the communist government of China - keeps flashing through his mind's eye.
'Just who were those two old ladies in the photograph the  media  were brandishing?  Something about them trying to use those pain-in-the-butt protest parks because their homes had been knocked down to make way for the Olympics...
'And   they had been arrested  and sentenced to a year of re-education through labour ... What were their names ...? Ah yes ... Wang and Wu ...'
The stewardess comes over and starts to turn Rogge's seat into a bed ...
'Would I call on Bocog and the Chinese to show, on the last day of the Olympics, some Olympic spirit?
'And ask the government for an 'Olympic pardon' so these two old ladies in their late 70s,  who  thought they could use the Games to highlight their injustice, can go free?'
He remonstrates to himself over that thought as his eyes close: 'Who do these reporters think we are? The UN? We can't interfere in another country's laws.'
But sleep does not come  quickly enough as Rogge plays out the year-long Olympic legacy for Wang and Wu.
'All I can advise as president of the IOC and as a qualified doctor, is that they should wrap up warm ...' he says, drifting away into sleep as the plane crosses the Ural mountains and back into the bosom of Europe.
Years the IOC worked with Bocog: 7



Jacques Rogge will have plenty to think about on his long flight home