Goodbye London...Hello Rio!!!

The London 2012 Olympics will go down in history as one of the most dramatic in terms of sheer excitement, organisation and the high level of competitiveness. Yaw Ampofo Ankrah is the Sports Editor of TV3 in Ghana and he was among the sell-out 85,000 capacity crowd at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford for the biggest sporting party of all time.

It would prove a futile attempt to try and recapture in words, what was a truly special night of music, colour, art and culture to crown a remarkable sporting event that almost had everything going to script.

The closing ceremony that followed the action over two and a half weeks of competition was watched in the Olympic Stadium by the 10,000 athletes, over 5,000 journalists and 80,000 spectators.

For countries like Ghana; without a single medal or final event to take back home as a yardstick for the future, the post mortem of the Games can only have one result; ''self-inflicted failure''.

Yet, it is not so much who or what to blame, but rather what to do between now and Rio 2016 to turn things around and curb the unprecedented decline of Ghana sports in general.

This is not the time to get all defensive and remain in a state of denial. For now, Team Ghana's failure would be held in temporary check as we salute what has been hailed as a spectacular success on all fronts.

As London starts saying goodbye to the hundreds and thousands of athletes, media and visitors who made the 2012 Olympics a special global event, the organisers will be pushed to finish hard.

The job is not yet completed and in a smart move, Heathrow Airport has introduced a check-in and bag-drop at the Olympic Village with volunteers forming a guard of honour to cheer athletes off at the airport.

Heathrow is expecting about 120,000 passengers to leave daily from Monday, with Gatwick Airport expecting at least 70,000.

With 31 check-in desks and seven special security lanes, the terminal is expected to handle the high number of departures.

Monday is expected to be Heathrow's busiest day with about 5,000 athletes leaving with some choosing to spend at least one extra day sightseeing and winding down before returning home to their respective countries.

Many lessons would have been learnt by those who need them most and that is not limited to the huge Brazilian contingent of technicians, journalists and members of the Local Organising Committee tasked to make Rio 2012 even better.