As the puffed-out chests of many of its inhabitants demonstrates, Great Britain is feeling rather smug about the Olympics. But how has the sporting extravaganza been seen around the world?
Still reeling from a poor performance that saw them come only 10th in the medal table, Australia nonetheless gave London 2012 a large thumbs-up. At least one Aussie risked being ostracised by suggesting London may even have gone one better than Sydney in 2000. "These Olympics had Sydney's vibrancy, Athens's panache, Beijing's efficiency, and added British know-how and drollery," wrote Greg Baum, in the Sydney Morning Herald. "With apologies to Sydney, they might just represent a new PB [personal best] for the Olympics."
The enthusiasm for London 2012 was a little more muted in Bejing, the 2008 hosts. In a poll on huanqiu.com – the website of the populist state-run tabloid Global Times – 95% of respondents thought Jacques Rogge wrong to praise London 2012 as happy and glorious. There is continuing anger at the badminton debacle that saw one Chinese pair and three from other nations disqualified. "Judges had double standards and made themselves look very unprofessional," one commenter wrote below the poll results. "And the tickets were shockingly expensive. The worst Olympics ever! From this Olympics, we see the fall of the [English] gentleman."
In a similar poll on ifeng.com, more than 56% of the 190,000 who voted gave a low rating to London 2012 due to poor organisation and the questionable judgment of referees, with 68% deeming the Beijing Games more successful. One user on the Sina Weibo microblog said: "London Games' has become a swear word."
There was a little more love across the Atlantic, with a blog by David Segal in the New York Times which noted that "the Games have hit this country like an extra-strength dose of a mood-enhancing drug". The alarmists and detractors had little fodder, he noted. "Even the weather played nice. This was an astoundingly seamless production, given the size of this city and the scale of the endeavour."
Newspapers on the west coast hailed the Olympics as a triumph of British spectacle and innovation. "Without getting too mushy, my take-away is always that, at heart, people want to get along and respect each other's cultures while seeing the world's best athletes do awesome stuff," mushed the San Jose Mercury News, singling out the volunteers for special praise. "London made that happen again. Cheerio to all responsible. Well done."
Bill Dwyre, the LA Times correspondent, said Britain had captured the essence of the event. "Every four years, some of us who type for a living lose about three weeks of our lives to gain a lifetime of experiences. It is called the Olympic Games." The finale, he said, capped a magical Games. "It is a wonderful, captivating musical show."
The Israeli press, full of anguish about the country's poor showing at the Olympics, praised London's staging of the Games. "The London Olympics gets a high score," wrote Uzi Dann on the front page of the liberal daily, Haaretz. It wasn't, he said, "as perfectly staged as those in Beijing, but there was a much better atmosphere, a genuine carnival feeling. The athleticism was outstanding, the crowd was wonderful (even if it was overly patriotic) and the Olympics organisers were astoundingly nice, polite and obliging."
In Thailand, papers focused on their country's own poor performance after athletes failed to bring home anything but silver and bronze despite winning gold medals at every Games since 1992. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, badminton silver medallist Chong Wei has been forced to apologise to Chinese rival Lin Dan over a controversial YouTube rap video in which the gold medal winner was denigrated as "cocky" and "on dope" before being warned by film-maker (and sometimes rapper) Namewee: "I see you one time, I beat you up one time."
German commentators have marvelled in the past two weeks at the way in which the British confidence in their own identity has received a boost thanks to the Olympics.
Gina Thomas, wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that "Britons who for years have become used to their own failings have amazed themselves at the Olympic Games. In the Olympic frenzy that has captured the nation and turned cynics into a happy human throng, Britain is celebrating itself not only as a country of immigration, but after years of growing separatist tendencies, once again as a united kingdom."
Despite the disappointment of Paris having lost out to London to run the 2012 games and David Cameron's stoking of cross-Channel awkwardness over fair play and false starts in the cycling, France's verdict on the running of the Olympics was an enthusiastic pat on the back. "Extremely positive" both in terms of "sporting results and organisation", said the daily Libération, while Le Monde noted that Britain has as many "whingers and professional pessimists" as France, and these had gladly predicted doom, gloom and chaos before the start of the Games, but had been proved wrong.
As well as new British sporting faces – and France did question whether British sport was dominated by the upper-classes (based in part on the royal equestrian presence) – Paris discovered a character they previously knew next to nothing about: Boris Johnson. "And the winner is … Boris," said a headline in the Journal du Dimanche, marvelling at a "Viking-like" buffoon-politician the paper felt managed to make the most out of every appearance, including his five minutes hanging from a zipwire.