Beijing closes 'greatest ever' Games

Beijing brought down the curtain on a summer of sporting excellence with a fourth spectacular ceremony in six weeks at the Bird's Nest stadium to close the Paralympics yesterday.

In a sumptuous pageant, again produced by film director Zhang Yimou, 2,000 dancers in brilliantly colourful costumes dazzled the 91,000 crowd with a performance on the theme of "a letter to the future" to bid farewell to the 4,000 Paralympians.

"These are the greatest Paralympic Games ever," International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Philip Craven said.

"The spirit that is ever bright in our movement found here in China a kindred spirit... one world, one dream, one people has become a reality."

In China, the disabled have often been stigmatised and suffered from a lack of facilities and chief Beijing organiser Liu Qi said he thought the success of the Games would leave a great legacy.

China, as they did at the Olympics and at the 2004 Athens Paralympics, topped the medals table with 89 golds and 211 total medals in a display of dominance that saw them more than double the haul of second-placed Britain on both counts.

Britain, who host the next Games in London in 2012, finished second with 42 golds, the US third with 36 while Ukraine (24) pipped Australia (23) to fourth place.

The issue of classification, which sorts the athletes into classes according to their disability, sometimes clouded the competition with Paralympians being re-assessed mid-Games and stripped of medals or excluded altogether.

Doping, however, was not a major problem with no positive samples to date from the more than 1,000 tests conducted, although four athletes fell foul of pre-Games tests.

The two athletes who also participated in the Olympics, South African swimmer Natalie du Toit and Polish table tennis player Natalia Partyka, both found the success that had escaped them in August.

Partyka beat a string of Chinese to retain her individual gold in the hosts' national sport, while amputee du Toit scooped five gold medals in the Water Cube aquatics centre.

Du Toit's compatriot Oscar Pistorius, dubbed the Blade Runner because of the prosthetics that enable him to sprint, was the main draw in the athletics and did not disappoint with 100, 200 and 400 metre gold medals.