Athens: If the welcome home party was grand, the send-off was equally spectacular as Athens bid a fabulous farewell to the world's 10,500-odd sportspersons from a record 202 countries who had assembled in Athens for the Olympic Games which concluded yesterday night (Aug 29, 2004).

The curtain was brought down at the jam-packed Olympic Stadium under a full moon with millions others around the globe watching the spectacular ceremony with awe and wondrous delight on their television screens.

It was a riot of colour and the stadium reverberated with the sounds of Greece's traditional and modern music accompanied by dancers wearing eye-catching costumes.

Amidst all these celebrations and revelry there was a tinge of sadness too that the Games had come to an end. The Greeks, who warmed the cockles of the overseas visitors' hearts with their hospitality, were in a party mood for having conducted the Games, about which there was a lot of pre-event negative publicity, in a faultless and fantastic manner.

Greece and Athens in particular, fully deserved the top marks given to the organisation of this mammoth sports spectacle by the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge at the fag end of the extravaganza.

The Games might have cost a total of almost 10 billion euros ($12.1 billion), more than double the original budget, to host and is expected to push Greece's budget deficit well above European Union limits, but all those things were forgotten by the Greeks who partied as one.