It ended like one of those mismatched heavyweight fights. The great lumbering bid from Beijing connected early with a couple of haymakers, thus earning the rights to set around about their business for the next eight years knowing that some bitter old hack might come and to try to entertain himself by giving Beijing a medical.

Beijing, who very narrowly missed out on staging hosting the 2000 Games, won in the second round of voting at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session ahead of Toronto, Paris, Istanbul and Osaka here in Moscow yesterday. Celebrations in Beijing were duly appropriate. There was western-style singing and dancing in the streets. The thin end of the wedge, some might say.

"We are very excited, very tired but very excited," said Wang Wei, the secretary-general of the campaign. "Our efforts have paid off. The world has come to understand Beijing and China better.

"If we build more bridges, I think we can resolve our differences. There's a lot of hard work to do, but I am confident we can hold an excellent Games. I think the world will come to understand us a lot better."

Improvements will be expected too. Amnesty International announced last week that 1,700 people had been put to death in China since April. Tibet is still occupied. Freedom of speech is still a pipe dream. And now the world will be calling with tea and cakes. Well, maybe not tea.

Tu Mingde, another key bid delegate, said was unworried about the smoke bombs metaphorically hurled Beijing's way.

"This will help economic development and social progress in all areas, including human rights," he said. "We've worked hard over the last two years, just like an athlete trains hard. It was a strong campaign for us on personal level ..."

Most observers had expected a win for Beijing, but the convincing look of the result is revealing. The Chinese took 56 votes on the second round and finished it there and then. Toronto, the nearest challenger, had just 22 votes. Whatever happens, the world of sport will never be the same again. Beijing has been forgiven much by the IOC. Human rights and state-sponsored drug cheating are being the major absolutions. The bid itself had less fewer built facilities actually completed than any of the other four, and the environmental problems which the city suffers have been overlooked.

In return, the IOC expects. And then expects some more. Beijing plans to spend $30 billion dollars on the Games in seven years time. The IOC expects that its role in creating such a legacy for the future will be rewarded by an upswing in the public regard with which the committee itself is held.

Popularly depicted as grasping freeloaders, the IOC's members yearn to be regarded as world statesmen. Hence the return to playing politics. In the past these ventures into validating certain regimes in the hope that they will roll over gratefully have backfired on the IOC.

The 1936 winter and summer Games went to Germany, whose subsequent attempts to turn the world into one big team left the IOC looking foolish. The same applies to the Games which marked Juan Antonio Samaranch's ascent to the presidency of the IOC. Seven months before the Moscow Games the USSR rolled into Afghanistan. The subsequent Games were an embarrassment.

Samaranch was instrumental in this, his final political act (apart from his shameless lobbying for a Nobel Prize, which will likely continue). His committee declined to embarrass him by rejecting Beijing again and, as expected, Monday's election of his successor of Juan Antonio Samaranch has been distracting the delegates all week, especially the rumours of South Korea's Kim Un Yong closing the gap on long-time favourite Jacques Rogge of Belgium.

It had been thought that a strong vote for Beijing would spell the end for Kim Un Yong and that Rogge would prevail, but the South Korean is made of tougher stuff. An anonymous fax has been floating around the IOC corridors this week promoting suggesting that Kim Un Yong's idea of paying every IOC member $50,000 a year because they are Olympic diplomats and they deserve it. This (and the whisper that Kim Un Yong will bring back the trips to host sites to inspect building sites and empty fields and stay in top hotels and eat nice meals) has gone down favourably amongst the electors.

Yes. Let the decadence begin. Again.