The international Olympic torch relay is now a sorry sight. Far from bringing nations together in harmony ahead of the Beijing games, the relay has provoked confront-ation and racial animosity and fanned the flames of Chinese nationalism.

Even as a visual spectacle - the torch journey was invented by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin games - the 2008 version has been a flop. The event will be remembered not for long-limbed athletes holding the torch aloft but for protests over Tibet and the sight of Chinese security guards surrounding a succession of runners, including (next week) Hong Kong bureaucrats and tycoons, as they shuffle towards the next torch-bearer.