It is 11 years since I was last in Beijing, and the speed of change has been stunning.

Rows of towering office blocks and underground shopping malls have been created, transforming a city which a decade ago had streets packed with cyclists.

Their numbers have diminished, and in all my time there I saw only one old man in a Mao jacket.

The Bid Committee has also changed since the huge disappointment 11 years ago when Sydney pipped them to the 2000 post.

In 1990 the population had enormous expectations of success - people in the street asked you about the city's chances of winning.

Then they looked state-of-the-art; now the once revolutionary designs look dated.

But there is nothing backward looking about China's desire for sporting success.

At the Sydney Games it finished third in the medal table, and on a trip to an elite school it was not difficult to see the reason why.

In the swimming pool, tiny eight-year-olds performed breathtaking, complex dives that would have won the national championships in many countries.

We saw the elf-like gymnastics stars of the future, and in one huge hall the noise was deafening from youngsters practising on 20 table tennis tables.

Quiet confidence

The Evaluation Commission has taken Beijing's ability to mount a huge capital expenditure programme on trust and it obviously feels confident about the city's ability to mobilise its huge resources.

Mindful of Beijing's reputation as a highly polluted city, a major investment programme has started to clean up the city's air, and plant trees on every piece of spare land.

Sitting in the restaurant where the famous Peking Duck was invented, there was a quiet confidence surrounding the Bid organisers.

The accepted wisdom was that the Games were theirs to lose, and that any mistakes could prove fatal but their fears were allayed when they got the thumbs up to hold the 2008 Games on 13 July.

They were frustrated that they had not been able to advertise enough the extent of reform and liberalisation in China but again, they neen't have worried.

The glamour of Beijing was clearly enough for the IOC.

Now, the marketing and television companies can start drooling at the use which can be made of the historic Forbidden City where the Three Tenors recently sang to promote the bid.

The Beijing bid | Clickable cities guide