BEIJING 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: Closing ceremony / handover to London: Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown speeches

BEIJING 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES: Closing ceremony / handover to London: Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown speeches; - There is one thing that visitors will find at our Olympics is completely unchanged, that is that virtually every one of the games will be - well I mourn the passing of some of these games, some of the sports - for example the Pankration whose chief exponient was Milo of Kroton, whose signature performance involved carrying an ox the length of the stadium, killing it with his bare hands and then eating it all on the same day, I'm trying to persuade Seb, the Prime Minister and Tessa to bring that one back - but they will find this unchanged, virtually every single one of our international sports were either invented or codified by the British and I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts who have excelled so magnificently at ping pong / Ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the nineteenth century, it was called wiff waff (whiff whaff), and there you have the essential difference between us and the rest of the world, other nations, the French, looked to the dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner, we looked to the dining table and saw an opportunity to play wiff waff, and that is why London is the sporting capital of the world, and I say to the Chinese, and I say to the world, ping pong is coming home, athletics is coming home, sport is coming home and we are going to give those sports an Olympic games to do Britain proud, to do London proud, and to do the world proud