We said goodbye to lovely Sydney last night. There was sorrow in the parting, for this was a near-perfect sporting celebration, given to us by a city which grew in stature as we watched it. It was a hard two weeks but sweet with it. For those of us who almost literally fled unloved Atlanta four years ago the experience of Sydney was as different as could be. Friendly, humorous, beery and beautiful. What was there not to like about Sydney?

The Games broke new ground in lots of areas. Stadium Australia was perfect, a construction of sweeping modernity and pleasing aspect which makes Croke Park or Stade de France look dated already. The Games were the greenest on record and the represented the first time that the depressing austerity of Olympism has been diluted by wit. The Australian opening and closing ceremonies spared us the thousand white doves and a brotherhood-of-man nonsense and gave us a laugh and a good time. There was a puncturing irreverence here that the Olympic movement has needed for a long time. From the unofficial cult mascot of the Games, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat (who was even brandished briefly by Sonia to wild acclaim on the night she won silver) to the big inflatables bouncing around the stadium last night it was good to see humour getting smuggled in.

As for the more traditional contraband of the Games, well drugs didn't boil under as a theme of the Games this time. The issue swept across the face of the Games and if sponsors and TV didn't like it than that was good. The more pressure on the IOC and the federations to clean up their respective acts the fairer the Olympics will be. There were lots of performances we saw in Sydney which we point-blank didn't believe in, but the frank discussion of the problem and the novel notion that even if it just to spite the Americans the IOC may be sincere about cleaning up their joint was welcome.

There may come a time when we can believe everything we see at an Olympiad, when we don't go around spotting that phenomenon that people have been calling HGH jaw, don't see steroids in every case of acne, don't smell EPO in every devastating sprint finish which scarcely causes the breaking of sweat.

Once a man won the Olympic 1,500 metres and 5,000 metres titles in the same day, then two days later took part in a cross country race through fields and past a factory belching toxic fumes. He won, but only 15 of 38 runners finished that race and those that made it back to the stadium were disoriented, staggering and in some cases bleeding. They scoured the fields for hours to find the rest of the competitors. Next day the man went out and won the 3,000 metres. That was 1924 and that was Paavo Nurmi. Maybe we'll believe in deeds like his again sometime.

Ah, these were good, friendly times in Sydney. People make a place and this a spot we'll come back to for the faces and the sights.

I was driven around good-humouredly one morning by James McCourt, whose father came from Belfast and whose mother came from Scotland early in the last century. A month after his 50th wedding anniversary this spring James lost his wife. He was in the process of cleaning out their house and their lifetime of memories to move into a retirement home and he decided to take a month of his time to volunteer to work on the Games.

He had a curiosity and friendliness and an interest in the outside world which I came to think of as typical of the 40,000 volunteers who worked these Games with a lack of fussiness and pettifoggery which should become the model.

There were times over the last 17 days when journalists, the moaniest tribe on this earth, turned to each other and said "Aussies are great aren't they?"

This could happen at anytime. Queuing to have your bags searched. "G'Day mate can I root in your stuff?" Standing in line for the train and the supervisor with the loudhailer sitting on a seat on a ladder high above us suddenly sees the funny side. "Move to the forward of the train please." Pause. "Deuce. New balls please. No flash photography." It's four in the morning and Steve from Albery has just driven his media shuttle into town and a Romanian journalist is broke and abusive and not willing to get a taxi the rest of the way. Steve: "No worries, mate, no drama. Let's drop you to your door." And he means it.

IT was a laid-back, good-humoured and happy Olympics. We'd thought it impossible to run an event of this magnitude without screw-ups. If corporate America could only come up with a sour, patchy endurance test like Atlanta, what hope had Sydney got? Well they had a passion for things other than the greasy till. They had pride and love and an appreciation of sport and no parsimony in their welcome. Turns out that's what it takes.

The transport ran sweetly and the computers went without a glitch. We were snowed a bit about Australia's relationship with it's indigenous people. There are things which have to be done which Cathy Freeman lighting the torch couldn't quite change but for 17 days Australia was a happy place and by becoming the first person to win an Olympic gold while running in a condom Cathy certainly put her people's agenda into the living rooms of Oz.

The Games also marked the beginning of the end of the Samaranch reign as president of the IOC. Juan Antonio's a strange old bird, leaving his dying wife to come to Australia, returning home for her funeral and then jetting back again, attempting to get into his luxury hotel in the dead of night. He has changed the Olympic movement forever, making it a commercially muscular but morally brittle force in the world.

He's a hard man to like and for all the damage he's done he (inadvertently perhaps) left enough good behind to make one optimistic for the future of sport. A couple of votes the other way seven years ago and we could have been up to our knees in pomposity in Beijing last night.

Instead we kissed goodbye to our Sydney Games.

"They could not have been better," said Samaranch. "I am proud to proclaim that you have presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever." He got that right, then shuffled off to make room for the dancing beauties from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.