"Happy and glorious Games" come to a close

LONDON -- The 2012 Summer Games, arguably the best-ever, came to a close Sunday night amid a big party at Olympic Stadium, a rock 'n roll show that reminded everyone everywhere that for all the solemnity and the gravitas, the Olympics are Games and games are fun. Such a simple concept. Such a remarkable premise. This, among so many extraordinary notions, is likely to be one of London's far-reaching legacies.

They promised a party.

They delivered.

"These were happy and glorious Games," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in his remarks Sunday night to the thousands who jammed Olympic Stadium.

Added London 2012 organizing committee chair Seb Coe, "We lit the flame and we lit up the world." Moments afterward, the cauldron was extinguished.

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Allyson Felix -- a performance every bit as impressive as Bolt's

LONDON -- David Rudisha provided the signature moment of the track and field meet at these Olympic Games. Usain Bolt rocked the house.

But Allyson Felix turned in a performance every bit as impressive as Bolt's, and if that sounds grandiose -- facts are facts. He will be leaving London with three gold medals and a world record. So will she.

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Usain Bolt: "These are the glory days"

LONDON -- This was one for the ages, a record-breaking performance so dominating it electrified everyone who saw it in person at Olympic Stadium, who watched on television around the world and who will watch it in the days and years to come. Usain Bolt is a once-in-history athlete. On Saturday night, in the final event of the track meet, in what may have been his final Olympic race -- or may not, depending on his health and any number of variables -- he unleashed raw, primal speed. It was at once fearsome and exhilarating.

Bolt and American Ryan Bailey, each man running the anchor leg in the men's 4x100 relay, got his baton at roughly the same time, in the lane next to the other. The race was on. But only for an instant. Bolt separated himself, with every step widening the gap, the crowd roaring with the roar of an airplane on takeoff as he hammered toward the finish line.

When Bolt crossed, the clock stopped but the noise did not: 36.84 seconds, a new world record.

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Stick-to-itiveness pays off for U.S. relay

LONDON -- When she is on the track, Carmelita Jeter  is all business. So when, as she crossed the finish line Friday night, her outstretched left hand -- baton in hand -- pointing out toward the red-and-black digital clock just in front of her, you knew it was something special. An instant later, the clock flashed: "New WR."

Jeter's anchor leg put the exclamation point on a spectacular race, the U.S. 4x100 women's relay team winning its first gold medal in 16 years. The clock stopped at 40.82 seconds.

It was the first time any women's relay team would run under 41, and it put an immediate and emphatic end to years of drama over dropped batons and other mishaps involving U.S. women's sprint relay teams. The U.S. men's 4x100 team gets its chance at redemption Saturday night.

"It feels surreal," Tianna Madison who ran the first leg Friday night, said, adding a moment later, "We really came together and made it happen."

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Bolt wins 200, declares he's a "legend"

LONDON -- Here is the measure of Usain Bolt's brilliance. He eased up because he felt tightness in his back as he rounded the corner in the men's 200 meters Thursday at Olympic Stadium and, in his words, "cruised" to the finish line, a winner nonetheless in 19.32 seconds. That time, 19.32, is the Michael Johnson gold-shoes race from Atlanta in 1996. When we all thought that was untouchable.

That was before Bolt came along. He has re-defined everything.

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Allyson Felix's killer speed wins the 200

LONDON -- There are moments in track and field, and Olympic, history that take your breath away. In the years to come, when they show Allyson Felix's powerful charge down the straightaway to win the women's 200 meters, it will be no less breathtaking than it was in person here Wednesday night.

What you saw here was speed. Killer speed. Awesome speed, and the force of will, and eight years of waiting to claim the gold medal in the 200, the race she has always called her baby.

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World's best hurdlers: Jones-ing for respect

LONDON -- Four years ago, Lolo Jones seemed headed for victory in the 100-meter hurdles in Beijing. She clipped the ninth hurdle. Dawn Harper is the 2008 Olympic champion, now and forever. Lolo Jones is, however, way better known than Dawn Harper, the subject of a marketing campaign that has made her arguably the best-known member of the U.S. track team even though, as many have noted, Lolo Jones has won the 2008 and 2010 60-meter world indoor hurdle championships and, on the international stage, not much else.

There comes a time when you have to walk the walk and, Tuesday night in a light rain, before 80,000 people at Olympic Stadium, Lolo Jones was given every opportunity.

She finished fourth.

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The pull of history over the 400-meter hurdles

LONDON -- Virtually everyone, even those who have only a passing knowledge of track and field, knows Edwin Moses. In the 1970s and 1980s, Moses was unbeatable. Literally. He won 122 straight races in the 400-meter hurdles. He won Olympic gold in the event in Montreal in 1976 and again in Los Angeles in 1984; surely the U.S.-led boycott of the Games in Moscow in 1980 was the only thing that prevented him from gold there, too. In 1988, in Seoul, Moses won bronze.

On Monday night, Angelo Taylor -- out in Lane 4 -- felt the weight, the pull, of history. The Olympic champion in the 400-meter hurdles in 2000 in Sydney and again in Beijing in 2008, he had the opportunity to tie or even surpass the great Edwin Moses.

There is a reason the late filmmaker Bud Greenspan used to say that the most interesting stories at the Olympics arrive in fourth or fifth place.

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Bolt is back and still the best

LONDON -- The world all but paused for a moment, held its collective breath to see if Usain Bolt still had it Sunday night, could still fire our collective imagination with his ability to run fast and true like nobody else on Planet Earth. The stillness before the gun went off gave way to a huge roar in Olympic Stadium as Bolt and seven other men, the fastest field-ever, roared down the straightaway.

The seven others, of course, held fast to their own dreams. For the most part, the rest of the world wished for Bolt, the man who ran a world-record 9.69 in Beijing in 2008, lowered that record to 9.58 in Berlin in 2009 but who had struggled with injury and form and even a false start -- at the 2011 world championships -- since.

The dreams of so many simply could not, would not, be denied.

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Phelps reaches the end, so limitless and free

LONDON -- This is the end, so limitless and free, Jim Morrison sang, and so it came on this Saturday night for Michael Phelps, the one and only, the greatest athlete in Olympic history. In what he said repeatedly would be his last competitive swim, Phelps, 27, swam the butterfly leg of the men's 4x100 medley relay for the U.S. team on the final night of the swim meet at the 2012 Olympic Games, the Americans winning in 3:29.35.

The victory gave Phelps his 22nd Olympic medal, his 18th gold. He finished these Games with six medals -- four gold, two silver.

He became the first male swimmer to throw the Olympic three-peat, and did it in not just one event but two, the 200 IM and the 100 butterfly. The medley victory also made him the third person to win three golds in that event, along with Jason Lezak and Ian Crocker.

"I have been able," he said late Saturday in emphasizing he truly is retiring from racing, "to do everything I wanted."

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