Partying Greeks dance in the moonlight

Greece staged an exuberant closing ceremony last night to bring the curtain down on the Athens Games.

"You have won," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge told the fiercely proud Greeks at the closing ceremony.

"These Games were held in peace and brotherhood. These were the Games where it became increasingly difficult to cheat (with drugs) and where clean athletes were better protected."

The words were sweet music to the Greeks, who defied the doom merchants who said Athens could never pull off the greatest sports show on earth.

"The Olympics came home and we've shown the world the great things Greeks can do," said Athens Games boss Gianna Angelopoulos.

"Athens was great for the athletes, Greece was great for the Games."

For this country of 10 million, the closing ceremony crowned an extraordinary summer of sport when the world's focus was on them.

First came their improbable victory as 80-1 outsiders in the Euro 2004 soccer tournament. Then, still nursing a nationwide hangover, they hosted 10,500 Olympic athletes from 202 countries with barely a hitch.

In Athens, the athletes were outnumbered seven to one by security personnel in Europe's biggest peacetime security operation that Rogge described as "flawless".

That comment proved premature when a lone man burst onto the road during yesterday's men's marathon and bundled the race leader, Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima, into the crowd.

In Athens the traffic flowed, the stadiums filled - after a slow start they even topped attendance in Seoul and Barcelona - and television viewing figures were 15 per cent up on Sydney.

The opening ceremony offered Greece a once-in-a-lifetime chance to show the world it was a modern, 21st Century.

The closing ceremony was all about having a good time. The arena was turned into a giant wheat field, illuminated - with consummate timing - by the August full moon.

A percussion band played up a storm by creating musical instruments with equipment taken from the Olympic sports.

A burst of fireworks heralded the appearance of the athletes in the futuristic stadium.

Bringing the curtain down on a triumphant Olympics, Rogge said: "I declare the Games of the 28th Olympiad closed and, in accordance with tradition, I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now in Beijing."