Olympics-Bolt boogies with the world at Olympic party

BEIJING (Reuters) - Celebrity gold medallists mingled with wide-eyed Olympic newcomers on Sunday when thousands of athletes in everything from straw hats to Islamic veils streamed into the Bird's Nest stadium to close the 2008 Games.

Usain "Lightning" Bolt, who entertained the crowd with cheeky antics at three gold medal wins in the stadium, carried Jamaica's flag, but Beijing's other top winner, eight-times gold medallist Michael Phelps, was not at the party.

Athletes from some 200 countries waved and blew kisses at TV cameras. They packed the stadium floor and boogied to a drum beat set by Chinese girl drummers in red plastic bodysuits. They kissed the medals round their necks.

Having athletes pour in as a big crowd, rather than march in country-by-country, was started at the 1956 Melbourne Games when a teenager suggested it as a way of banishing politics and hostilities from the closing event.

"They must not march, but walk freely and wave to the public," the teenager wrote to the Melbourne organisers. The idea was immediately adopted and has stuck ever since.

Chris "Flying Scot" Hoy, who picked up three cycling golds, held the flag for Britain, celebrating its biggest gold medal haul in a century and being handed the baton for the 2012 Games.

Weightlifter Itte Detenamo carried Nauru's flag, watched by a crowd 10 times bigger than the population of his South Pacific island nation.

China's lofty basketball player Yao Ming bent down to hug fellow athletes in the crowd, which included everyone from Ethiopia's history-making distance runner Kenenisa Bekele to plucky 13-year-old swimmer Dwayne Didon from the Seychelles.

The 2008 Games reaped 43 world records. Bahrain, Mongolia and Panama were taking home golds for the first time.

Beijing's jaw-dropping opening and closing ceremonies eclipsed any Olympic show before it, veteran commentators said.

"It was a fantastic Olympics. The best I've ever seen," 80-year-old Olympics fanatic Jin de Silva said at the closing show, wearing a T-shirt from the 1948 London Games where he ran the 400 metres hurdles for Sri Lanka.

"China did well. It was so beautiful I can't find the words," said De Silva, who has travelled to 10 Games and won a medal for collecting the biggest pile of Olympic souvenirs in the world.

(Editing by Ralph Gowling)

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