(Ladies and gents, I bring you Baggiesboy’s final installment of insider commentary on the Beijing Olympics, where he was, befitting his station, in a position of some considerable power. Many many thanks to the Bag for his always excellent work on the Games. No doubt he is in Zurich as we speak on some matter of espionage involving the Weltklasse Track Meet and the rising suspicions that Usain Bolt is a space alien. -L)

Tibet, Internet access and the protest application count would seem to be the burning questions of the Beijing Games. But that impression is drawn exclusively from reading newspapers and watching television newscasts. Inside the International Broadcast Center there was only one question on anyone’s mind: How do you say that name?

While prim, grim IOC spokesperson Giselle Davis was shooting dark looks and poorly scripted answers at the assembled media during the five-ring rulers’ ever more sporadic press conferences, I was offering advice on the age old question: is it ee-gor or I-gor? Like Ms. Davis, I rarely let my composure slip as I proffered an answer I wouldn’t like to have to repeat under oath.

I was on even less solid ground with India’s first Olympic gold medal winner in an individual event. Abinav Bindra just had to be Ab-hee-nav Been-dra, right? The shooting star of the Indian team not only struck gold in the 10m air rifle: he earned a free rail pass for life courtesy of Indian Railways and a serious stash of rupees from the Indian Cricket Board. Me, I got some strange looks from my colleagues.

But at least I made an honest effort, which is more than can said for Wang Wei, official talking head for the Beijing Organizing Committee. His eternal response to ceaseless questions about Tibet was that the western media needed to make a better effort to understand China. While no one would ever confuse a press briefing for the Temple of Enlightenment, the redoubtable Wei wasn’t about to go out of his way to offer detailed footnotes to his terse Tibetan history lessons.

Mongolia, though, was a different story: At least in my Q&A world. When Tuvshinbayar Naidan made Olympic history by claiming Mongolia’s first ever-Olympic gold medal with his victory in the Men’s 100-kg judo, like Mr. Wei, I knew what was coming next. Did I obfuscate, dodge and weave or offer canned answers to obvious questions? Hell no: this was the Olympic Games, so I took my best shot. Too-shin bai-ya Nye-dan I exclaimed to anyone who would listen. At first it seemed to work. The celebrations in the ‘Tribune Area” nearly matched those on the streets of Ulan Bakor. But then came the inevitable fourth estate curveball: how do you say Ulan Bakor? Finally I understood why the IOC allows no follow-up questions at its press conferences. But as there was no kind hearted volunteer to wrestle the microphone away from my tormentors, I did the unexpected: I resorted to plausible truth. ‘Mate, where I come from, we call it: oo-lhan bah-tor.” Fair enough seemed the collective response.

See, even the media can let the hapless off the hook every now and then. That’s just one of many unexpected things I learned in Beijing. For instance, who knew that fencing allowed video replay? Not me. And once the challenge is made: sadly not via a gauntlet hurled at the blue blazer clad judge but by the swordsman drawing an imaginary box in the air while trying not to impale himself with an epee , after seeing that I’ll have no sympathy for NFL head coaches struggling to pull a red flag from their back pocket this season. By the way, the entire gathering of swashbuckling aficionados is allowed to watch the replay along with the review official. As I had no idea what they were challenging in the first place, I couldn’t tell you how useful video replay is in fencing, but I will make one claim — if these blade wielding ballet masters went en garde in the Games without face guards, then ratings would surely soar.

Back at the IOC podium no one lets down the guard for a second. IOC anti-doping chief Arne Ljunqvist not only told the BBC that the foul air in the host city in the week prior to the Opening Ceremony was not smog, but then later chastised a Polish swimming coach for not engaging in ‘proper behavior” when the coach speculated that China’s 200m butterfly gold medalist Liu Zige might be on the juice. Apart from the fact that she had the build of a 1980s era East German swimmer, no one in the swimming community had ever heard of her and she lowered her personal best by a country mile: well, what was there to be suspicious about? Bad manners must be flushed out of the Games.

Something I need to work on myself. For while the IOC guardians of the Games never cracked under the assorted questions of sport, Thailand’s 53kg women’s weightlifting winner: Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon was too much for me. The façade of infallible phonetics was finally breached. I could only proffer an abrupt Annie Savoy meets Wang Wei impression: ‘You can look it up.”