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It is up to the GB team to prove, as the Winter Olympics is threatened with relegation from UK TV's free-to-air list, that the British public have plenty to get excited about from their sofas come February.

Last week, Eleanor Oldroyd suggested one reason to watch: the propensity for Winter Olympic events to go horribly, entertainingly, wrong. As she was writing that, British skeleton's Kristan Bromley produced another reason: the chance of a GB gold medal in Vancouver, having fought his way to bronze in the first World Cup event of the season.

This blog isn't just about reasons to watch in February, but also what to watch now (and where to watch it), how things like events and qualifying work, and the latest on the British team's Olympic hopes.

Ed and Eddie - Drake (right) and Edwards, faces of Britain at the Winter Olympics

Some will cringe at the mere mention of his name, but Eddie the Eagle is not only heading back to Canada, he has even survived a gruelling selection process this time around.

If you're younger than 25 you may not remember the sight of Michael Edwards' legendary, unsuccessful attempts to conquer the ski jump on behalf of Britain at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

The courage and determination of Edwards - who can't even claim to be Cheltenham's finest Olympic export, let alone Britain's, given he shares a home town with rowing gold medallist Zac Purchase - allied to a complete absence of skill, made him superb viewing for most people.

But that view was not shared by fellow skiers and the governing body, who did not enjoy being made to look stupid and subsequently altered the qualification rules to stop a repeat performance.

However, the Eagle will soar again in Winnipeg on 7 January, when Eddie takes part in the Olympic torch relay. He has even made it through a cull of international participants in which double Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt and tennis player Nicolas Kiefer were dropped. One of those taking their place is Sir Matthew Pinsent who, we're proud to say, will be part of BBC Sport's reporting team throughout the Winter Olympics.

Eddie spoke to BBC Gloucestershire last year, remembering his Calgary appearance 20 years on - and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films) is rumoured to be portraying Edwards in a forthcoming movie.

Not that you should associate Britain with endearingly abject failure these days. For 2010, we've even got an Eddie or two with medals in mind: British skier Ed Drake has started his season with a podium finish at the Europa Cup in the Austrian resort of Reiteralm.

Drake told BBC Radio 5 live he's thrilled with the way his career is heading as Vancouver 2010 looms.

"When you turn up at the big races it's the crowd and the expectation you put on yourself that elevates your performance to a different level," he said.

"My qualification is going well, I'm on track. I've pre-qualified but the list doesn't come out until 18 January."

Results are still vital for Drake to build his confidence and establish his place in the British pecking order (he came 20th in the next race, the following day). But he has actually already met the GB team's qualification criteria for Vancouver 2010, as have several others.

In fact, the third-place finish in Austria doesn't do much to Drake's chances overall. For example, his FIS points score (FIS being the governing body), on which rankings are based, will not change. In skiing the aim is to have as few points as possible, and your ranking score is the average of your two best scores over the past year or so. Drake scored 11.89 in Reiteralm, which isn't as good as his two top scores of 9.58 and 10.07, so his average of 9.83 remains unchanged.

What will affect his Vancouver chances is how all the Brits perform. The GB team are waiting to find out how many quota places they have earned - in other words, how many men and women Britain can send to the Winter Olympics.

Drake is likely to face selection trials for the GB team in January

The likelihood is there will be more athletes who meet the criteria than quota places available - my understanding is Britain can expect five places, with seven qualified athletes. So British organisers will hold a national selection trial early in 2010 to decide who gets to go. Drake's fate, along with that of his team-mates, will be sealed there.

In the meantime, though, his next big event is the next World Cup stage at Lake Louise, in Canada. Keep an eye on that from Wednesday, 25 November to Sunday, 29 November. Follow the GB team's progress on the Snowsport GB website.

Drake is an Alpine skier, while Huddersfield teenager Fiona Hughes, who won a junior freestyle cross-country skiing race in Sweden last week, is edging closer to reaching the qualification standard in Nordic skiing.

Winning her 10km race earned Hughes the additional (some would say more enjoyable) prize of a basket of local Swedish delicacies, including smoked reindeer meat, cheese and sausage. If somebody had told me that's how skiers earned their keep, I'd have abandoned ice hockey and headed for the piste long ago.

British number one Andrew Musgrave, from Aberdeenshire, starts his Nordic season in just a couple of days' time in Norway. Saturday sees the men's senior World Cup get under way and his coach, Roy Young, is in buoyant mood about British chances.

"I predict we will make history this winter with the best season the British Nordic ski team has ever had," said Young, who looks set to guide GB to their first appearance in the Nordic events at a Winter Olympics for eight years.

BBC Scotland's Katie Still spoke to Young on a visit to the ski club where British hopefuls are training.

The next few weeks will be busy for the BBC team, too. I'll be up in Sheffield on Friday, 27 November to see top figure skaters in action at the British Championships. Tickets are still available if you want to see the likes of top GB duo John and Sinead Kerr for yourself, or you can pay to watch online - there are more details on the governing body's own website.

The Kerrs have been dominant in British figure skating for many years and can hope for a medal when they reach Vancouver. They placed second in the figure skating Grand Prix in Japan earlier this month, behind American pair Meryl Davis and Charlie White. I'll be talking to them in depth on Friday, an interview you'll be able to watch on our website - so if you have any questions you want me to put to them, let me know.

Joining the Kerrs on the plane to Canada will be Coleraine skating star Jenna McCorkell, who spoke to the BBC earlier this week.

Also coming up are the European Curling Championships in Aberdeen (sponsored by Gruyère cheese, which again raises hopes of a basket of savoury delights for the winner). International winter sports events at this level are incredibly rare in Britain, simply because it's not often we have the facilities, let alone the global reputation. But Scotland's curlers have long been among the world's finest, and Britain famously took women's curling gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

We'll bring you the best from those events and don't forget Ski Sunday resumes on Sunday, 13 December, with highlights from the next round of skiing's World Cup, which you can watch live on the red button or online across that weekend. Remember, you can follow me on Twitter too for the latest updates.

If you're trying to stay on top of all things Winter Olympic before the Games begin, I'll be back in a couple of weeks with another update. In the meantime, if you missed the last one, it's here. Any questions about the events, the athletes or our coverage? Let me know and I'll get an answer for you.

UPDATE - 0907 GMT, 21 November: GB's Shelley Rudman claimed silver in her second skeleton World Cup race, a few hours after I'd written this, so Britain already has World Cup medals from both its skeleton men and women this season.

But there's polling evidence that the UK's pro-Olympians are in a majority - and these Games are, in any case, emphatically on their way.

You can see just how much progress is being made on the official webcams.

The 2012 Aquatics Centre recently saw its roof lifted into place

The question popping up often now is how the 2012 Olympics fit into the wider UK sporting story.

We know we already have the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow in 2014 and the Rugby World Cup then follows in England in 2015.

Last week there was a flurry of activity - if that's what you call unceremoniously dumping some of the board - around England's bid for the FIFA World Cup in 2018.

And really there are two visions here: one of a golden decade of top sport in the UK in which we're world-class at hosting events and deriving benefits from them - or the second which flinches from the cost, the disruption and the alleged vulgarity of it all.

I'm taking a gamble that Catherine Bennett, who represents the second of these arguments in the most recent edition of The Observer, doesn't go to much football since I didn't see a lot of thuggery, vomit or even jingoism in Germany's brilliantly-organised World Cup of 2006. Or at the overwhelming majority of domestic football.

But where she's right is in talking about the difficulty of identifying the benefits of most bids for the mega sport events.

A sift through recent history will show that almost all host cities and nations understate the costs and overstate the benefits.

We can hope that London 2012 will reverse that - on benefits, at least, because the costs argument has already been lost - and there are public ambitions from both the Conservative Mayor of London and the Labour government nationally.

In the BBC we'll keep a keen eye on how London 2012 delivers against these objectives.

But with London and with Glasgow and with the FA's bid for 2018 there's part of the debate only the public can decide - and that is how much better they feel, and how important it is to the country's identity and well-being, that these events take place here.

The Manchester Velodrome plays host to the 2009 UCI Track Cycling World Cup

It's a different version of the impact on Brazil and South America, beyond the purely economic, that was discussed around Rio's bid.

This struck me particularly in Manchester on Friday.

I'm interested in hearing from Mancunians and from everyone else who footed the bill, but it seems to me that the city got a long-term boost from hosting the successful Commonwealth Games in 2002 and it's done decently in legacy terms too - as you see in the Velodrome with its contribution to Team GB's cycling success and every time Manchester City play at Eastlands.

Whether it justifies the cost points again to the question the UK public will be answering in 2012 and beyond; but what's beyond doubt is that the UK is on the map of international sporting hosts in a way that it wasn't for most of the previous decades.

Whether that delivers gold or base metal, we shall soon see.

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I was standing in the Reuters newsroom where I worked in the then German capital of Bonn, when my former colleague Martin Nesirky filed an urgent story from East Berlin. The old printer it emerged from went into alarm mode.

The story that flashed around the world in seconds had a simple message - East German citizens could now leave the country without a visa.

But what it really meant was that the Berlin Wall had just crashed down before our eyes. It took a few hours before everybody - East German citizens and the guards on the wall particularly - understood what was happening.

For the next weeks and months, I was in the middle of the most exciting story of my life. And, it is often forgotten, that it was a big sporting story too.

I went into East Germany and hunted down the doctors who had been running the GDR's former drug-taking regime. Amazingly, they were very honest about the systematic cheating. In the late autumn of 1989, there was a real sense that East Germans needed to unload the emotional baggage they had been carrying around for decades.

Within hours of the Wall coming down, there was talk of a Berlin Olympic bid and a joint East-West Olympic team. At the time, both ideas seemed years away. But reunification happened within a year and we saw the emergence of a united German team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The Berlin bid was less successful, largely because the Cold War was over when it went to the International Olympic Committee.

I then reported on a fascinating five years of German sport when the football team won the World Cup in Italy and Germany was a force in a variety of Olympic sports, the mix of east and west German systems.

The country's powerful economy also meant many major championships came to Germany because there were plenty of big-name sponsors ready to back them.

The reason I am writing about this is that I feel Britain could be heading into equally exciting sporting days in the three years to the 2012 Olympics and beyond.

We've just had a great world gymnastics championships in London and the ATP World Tour tennis finals are heading to the O2 Arena this month. This will put the global spotlight on London and on the O2 as one of the key 2012 venues.

The Olympics will mean many more global championships will be taking place in London and Britain in the next few years. There's the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 and almost certainly, a world athletics championships at the Olympic Park in the five years after 2012.

You could add the possibility of a football World Cup in 2018 but my sources tell me there's going to be a lot of work to do to stop the Spanish and the Russians snatching that tournament away from us.

But even if the World Cup bid fails next year, London and Britain must enjoy this next decade and use these events to inspire kids to take up sport.

And we have to make sure people away from London - in Birmingham, Manchester and Scotland - get a piece of all of the action when the capital has its big days. That means cheap rail tickets, Park and Ride, and travel-ticket deals have to be a big part of the next 10 years.

As a member of our Olympics reporting team and an ice hockey commentator, I'll be in Vancouver (and Whistler) alongside Rob Hodgetts and Anna Thompson, covering the Games for the BBC Sport website.

But the Games won't just emerge out of nothing. The world's top winter sports athletes are already getting stuck into the winter season - there is action all over the place as they cram in training sessions and try to get the kind of results, and confidence, that will see them on to medals in Canada.

Here's a round-up of what's been going on, including links to the best stuff on the BBC and elsewhere, and a look ahead to the coverage we've got coming up.

Solden, in Austria, is almost always the first place to look when the winter sports season gets going. It's the traditional venue for the start of the skiing World Cup circuit.

This year, Solden's men's giant slalom competition was won by Swiss skier Didier Cuche for the men, ahead of American star Ted Ligety, both of whom usually feature near the top of the standings.

Cuche won the 2007 world championship bronze medal in giant slalom, and holds the world title in super-G, another alpine skiing discipline (all of which are explained in our guides). Ligety has the 2009 world bronze to his name, and won Olympic gold in the combined event in Torino in 2006.

In the women's event, Finland's Tanja Poutiainen nipped in ahead of Austrian local favourite Kathrin Zettel to win by a margin of one hundredth of a second. Poutiainen won silver in the giant slalom at the last Olympics, but has never won a world or Olympic title, so it's a great start to her campaign.

However, another Austrian star, Nicole Hosp, tore her knee ligaments and is going to miss the rest of the season. She won the giant slalom world title in 2007, and would have been a medal contender at Vancouver.

The news from Solden wasn't great for Britain's Chemmy Alcott, either. Alcott is GB's only real hope in women's skiing right now, and last month she told Anna she has "the self-belief to win gold", but she also needs results - and finished down in 19th in Solden. Here's Swissinfo's report on proceedings, and the results are here.

The next event is slalom in the Finnish resort of Levi on 14 and 15 November. Check the skiing governing body's full calendar of World Cup events for more. And once you've done that, take a look at Ghana's "snow leopard" Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, who spoke to us last week.

Britain's snowboarders have been in action too. Ben Kilner, a 21-year-old from Banchory in Aberdeenshire, is hoping to reach Vancouver to compete in the half-pipe event, and finished 14th in the sport's second World Cup event of the season in Switzerland.

He didn't reach the final but, in his own words, "the result keeps me on track for Vancouver so I'm really pleased with that". Next up is the third round on 6 and 7 January 2010 in Kreischberg, Austria. There's more on the SnowsportsGB website, and Kilner was in London not so long ago, showing off at Battersea power station. We spent a bit of time speaking to him here.

Britain's Ben Kilner - a snowboarding powerhouse in the making?

The hundred-day countdown mark gave the British Olympic Association a cue to voice fears that London 2012 fever might overshadow British achievements in Vancouver.

BOA boss Andy Hunt said: "There's no way that I want winter athletes to ever feel like second-class citizens. They are absolutely fundamental to the Olympic movement, both in Britain and around the world."

Britain's winter sports competitors get roughly 1.5% of the funding available to the summer sports - and usually have to train abroad for their troubles, too. (There being no skeleton run or ski jump in the UK, among other facilities.)

We've heard tales of British winter sports athletes flogging goods from their car boots to make ends meet and pay training costs, and certainly there are others who fund themselves in the absence of official backing.

So novel ways of raising cash are nothing new, but the US speedskating team still raised eyebrows when they got US late-night TV comic Stephen Colbert involved.

Colbert's show is now sponsoring the team - or at least, the show's fans are. The show itself is paying nothing, but will encourage its viewers to donate. The US team say they don't know if they'll get $5 or $500,000.

Is it time for a GB response? Should the next series of X Factor - or perhaps more appropriately, Dancing On Ice - focus on finding winter sports talent, with the phone voting profits going to the athletes? I'm thinking Hole In The Wall On Ice would be appointment-to-view television in our living room.

Britain's skeleton team are one of our best bets for a medal in Vancouver. Shelley Rudman brought home silver in 2006, GB's only medal of the Games, and is heading back into action alongside partner and fellow skeleton star Kristan Bromley this year.

Their first two World Cup events are on 12 and 20 November at the US venues of Park City and Lake Placid respectively. Before they left the country, the BBC went filming with the pair.

Nationality issues are causing consternation in both the British and French camps ahead of the Winter Olympics.

Ice dancers Mark Hanretty and Christine Chitwood have given up on their bid to get into the British team for Vancouver - because as far as organisers are concerned, Christine is still American.

Though she married an Englishman in August, her visa has yet to drop through the letterbox, and it'll be two more years before she can claim UK citizenship. All of which leaves Sochi 2014 as their target.

Remember French athlete Eunice Barber? Initially from Sierra Leone but a French competitor since 1999, Barber (right) is a former world champion in the heptathlon and long jump.

Her next trick was going to be a bid for women's bobsleigh gold in Vancouver, having re-trained to represent France in the event. But it takes two to tango long jump bobsleigh, and Canadian-born Lesa Mayes-Stringer, the only woman capable of driving the French team's sled alongside Barber, has been denied French nationality for a second time.

"There is not much hope left," according to Charles Dumont, technical director of the French winter sports federation, quoted in the Vancouver Sun. "But we will try to mobilize support in political circles."

Finally, keep an ear out for BBC Radio 5 live's next Winter Olympics special, coming up on Thursday, 12 November from 2000 GMT, with Eleanor Oldroyd presenting. I'll pop details of who's appearing on the end of this blog as soon as I know, and the whole thing will be on iPlayer too.

Questions about the Winter Olympics? Want to know more about one of the sports, one of the athletes, or BBC coverage? Leave a comment below and I'll get onto it for you, or you can ask me on Twitter.

Yep, things are moving in Canada. It's now fewer than 100 days to the start of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the journey of the Olympic torch has begun.

I should say I love Canada. How can you not be won over by a country with places called Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat?

I've had a number of holidays over there and I'm particularly fond of British Columbia, the province that will be hosting the games in Vancouver and up in the mountains at Whistler.

So I've been keeping an eye on the start of the torch relay both for personal interest and also to monitor how the event is being staged given that London 2012 gets ever closer.

The 106-day cross country relay will end in Vancouver on February 12

The Vancouver flame was lit in the traditional way at Olympia and then travelled around Greece before being handed over in Athens.

It flew to Canada encased in a miner's lantern on board a military plane, and we're told it had a row of seats to itself.

There was a total of 4 flames and 6 lanterns - presumably in case of any unfortunate incidents of extinguishment.

But it landed successfully in the BC capital of Victoria, a place on the edge of the Pacific Ocean which feels like a British town thanks to a grand hotel serving afternoon tea, some well-tended gardens and the statue of Queen Victoria outside the Parliament buildings.

And then the torch began its journey round Canada in what will be the longest domestic relay in Olympic history, ahead of the Games themselves next February.

If you've got time, have a look at the daily highlights log on the Vancouver 2010 website. There's also loads of coverage in the Canadian press.

What leaps out is the pride of a country about to stage the Olympic Games, and also the sheer pleasure of the people selected to carry the flame.

Alongside that is the potential to "play" with the torch: to take it to unusual locations, to devise novel forms of transport and to maintain interest despite what's something of an endurance test.

Ruth Sadler, a 72-year-old who still rides waves off Vancouver Island, hands the flame to surfer Raph Bruhwiler

I know the London organisers are watching the Vancouver experience and are about to start their planning in detail. We too will have a torch handed to us in a stadium in Greece - in the Spring of 2012.

It will be transferred to the UK, by means currently unknown, for its journey around our nations and regions before it lights the Olympic cauldron on July 27th.

I was talking to a colleague about the Canadian experience so far, and he said he thought ours would be significantly different: "we're more cynical and we prefer things understated in a British way."

I'm not sure about cynical, but I am sure about Britishness: it would be bizarre if the UK didn't make this torch journey its own. And that's the opportunity: to take a global symbol in a year the eyes of the world are upon us and to make it part of our national story - just as they're doing in Canada now.

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The streets are quiet, with traffic restrictions introduced in the run-up to the Games remaining in place until the conclusion of the Paralympics on September 20. Construction sites remain eerily silent, with the migrant labourers that have helped to transform the Chinese capital also unable to return to the city until the end of next month. Factories within the city limits remain idle, or working at reduced capacity. Over the past few days, the air has been incredibly clear, the sky a deep blue and the Western Hills visible in high-definition from the city centre.

This situation is unlikely to remain permanent. After September 20, the pollution measures will be lifted, cars will stream back onto the city's broad highways, the migrant workers will return, building work will recommence, and the smog will almost certainly return.

But having had a taste of clean air and congestion-free streets, Beijingers are understandably reluctant to countenance a return to the bad old days.

Hundreds of thousands of message board posters and bloggers have been actively calling on the government to keep some of the pollution and traffic restrictions in place for good. 

An opinion poll conducted by state news agency Xinhua, found 56% of Beijing residents in favour of at least some of the restrictions remaining in place permanently. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that an opinion survey of 10,000 people found 56 per cent in favour of retaining some restrictions. An op-ed piece in the city's most liberal daily newspaper (I use the term hesitantly, this is a one-party state after all) called for the special Olympic lanes - the third lane on many highways has been reserved for official traffic during the Games - to be converted into bus lanes after the Games to speed up journey times and encourage Beijingers to leave their cars at home. The fact that the tightly controlled state media is being given the freedom to debate these issues means that the issue is at the very least being considered at a governmental level.

Politicians are acutely aware of a rising sense of activism among the urban middle-classes over environmental issues in China, and of the dangers of not responding to these concerns. Over the past 18 months, there have been a number of large-scale public demonstrations against factories, landfills and other large-scale polluting industries - see my previous blog post on the issue. Whereas in the past, such public gatherings would have been quickly, and if necessary violently, dispersed by the police, all have largely been allowed to pass off peacefully, although organisers were reportedly questioned and harassed after the event.

Just last weekend, an estimated 500 residents of Changying, in the city's eastern suburbs, took to the streets to protest against the continued operation of a large waste disposal facility close to their homes. According to Hong Kong-based human rights groups, two protestors were injured in clashes with security officials, while another is reported missing. However, eyewitness reports suggested that the protest was peaceful and well-behaved.

In a couple of weeks, the Paralympics will be over, the Beijing 2008 bunting will come down and, in all likelihood, most if not all of the temporary pollution restrictions will be lifted. But the Games have undoubtedly emboldened Beijingers - both helping them to believe that they are now living in a truly a globally recognised and admired city, but also in giving them the confidence to stand up for their rights.

In the aftermath of every Olympic games, there is plenty of talk about legacy. From an overhauled infrastructure to the dozens of new venues and hundreds of shiny new hotels, shopping centres and apartment complexes that were rushed to completion in time for the Games, the Olympics has most definitely left its mark on Beijing.

The 1988 Games in Seoul ushered in a period of rapid political liberalisation and reform. I do not see this happening in China. But by empowering citizens at a local level to express their views and stand up for their interests, these Olympics have changed Beijing society. And if the end result is a realisation that the heavily polluting, heavy industry growth model that has fuelled China's economic transformation over the past 30 years is unsustainable, then these Games may have left the most important legacy imaginable, not just for China's 1.3 billion citizens, but for the world as a whole.

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From the moment an unkempt Boris Johnson, suit jacket unbuttoned and hands in pockets, waddled into the Bird's Nest, the mood of the Closing Ceremony - which, to that point had been impressive but ultimately rather cold - changed. Johnson, a huge grin on his face, stood on the podium waving sheepishly, clearly not quite sure what to do with his hands.

He grabbed the Olympic flag off IOC president Jacques Rogge, managed to get it tangled up, before waving it a few times - it was supposed to be six but I don't think Boris was counting - signalling the handover of the Games to London. Johnson departed, hands alternating between his pockets, and shaking hands with the rather bemused mayor of Beijing, Liu Qi.

Then the lights dimmed, and in drove a bus. We were promised an iconic red London double-decker, but the plain red coach was more reminiscent of a rail replacement bus on the London-Norwich mainline. The doors opened and out jumped a team of multicultural dancers, reading the papers and twirling umbrellas. After three minutes of chaos - a little girl appeared at one point to clamber over some bodies (apparently she had been chosen by Blue Peter viewers) - the roof opened to reveal Leona Lewis, looking terrified that the raised platform she was standing on was about to topple and fall, and a white-haired Jimmy Page, clearly delighted that organisers had decided to cut straight to his guitar solo.

The mostly Chinese crowd looked on in stunned silence. A few tapped their feet awkwardly. Then the star attraction, David Beckham, appeared on the top deck, accompanied by a very attractive, scantily clad violinist - why not, I guess - and to the delight of the crowd proceeded to kick an oversized football randomly in the direction of the Olympic volunteers in the stadium.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was all over, the bus framed by some frankly pathetic-looking flashing umbrellas as it departed the stadium. London's surreal interlude to another Chinese show of power was complete.

Objectively, London's opening salvo to the 2012 Olympic Games last night was awful. Our ramshackle assortment of entertainment and somewhat ham-fisted attempts at comedy - I was half expecting three buses to come along at once but I guess that would have pushed the show way over budget - paled in comparison to Zhang Yimou's vast, highly choreographed, and visually stunning set-pieces.

But after an Olympic Games that, while incredibly impressive, have been distinctly lacking in fun and spontaneity, the fact that an attempt was made at humour, and that the overriding air was one of self-deprecation, was a blessed reminder that some nations are confident enough to be able to laugh at themselves.

China has been a consummate host over this past Olympic fortnight. Never before has a Games been run so smoothly, perhaps never again will we see such impressive venues. And the people of Beijing have been incredibly welcoming and friendly.

But the overall air of intense national pride - when 10,000 people are joylessly yelling "China must win, China must win," over and over again, the effect is faintly terrifying - coupled with China's acute sensitivity and complete inability to take any form of criticism whatsoever, can wear down even the most supportive of guests - I'm talking about myself here.

China should take a great deal of confidence from these Games. Not only has it proved its international doubters wrong in the organisational stakes, its athletes achieved their ambition by topping the medal table by a significant margin.

Hopefully, this should also go someway towards ridding the country of its largely self-imposed victim complex. The state-sanctioned version of history, taught to hundreds of millions of schoolchildren across China, is one of a nation that was repeatedly humiliated by the rest of the world, but which, thanks to the glorious efforts of the Communist Party since 1979 - the first thirty years are conveniently glossed over - has regained its rightful place as a global superpower.

There is no denying that China has suffered at the hands of both the Western imperial powers and Japan over the past 200 years, and it is understandable that there should be some lingering bitterness and resentment. And the government deserves a great deal of credit for lifting its people out of poverty and ushering in economic growth on an unprecedented scale.

But the fact is that China is no longer a victim - it is the world's emerging superpower, its economy is almost single-handedly preventing us from sliding into an all-out global recession right now, and it is moving from being the low-cost workshop of the world into one which, increasingly, is outsourcing its designs and expertise overseas. The sooner it realises this, the quicker it will be accepted, and trusted, by the rest of the world.

If these Olympics can go some way towards enabling the Chinese to be confident enough to make a fool of themselves in front of hundreds of millions of viewers and not really care, then the billions of pounds it has ploughed into these Games may just have been worth it.

But judging by Hu Jintao's fixed, steely gaze as he watched over the closing fireworks last night, I fear that the Chinese government is still a long way off being able to do so.

For all the latest Olympic news, commentary and analysis, check out MSN's Beijing Olympics special report.

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