The fireworks have faded, the remaining athletes are being shuttled to their charter flights and the mountain media centre is being dismantled.
The Beijing Olympic Games – the second of the COVID-19 era — have come to an end.
It was, of course, an Olympics shaped inexorably by the pandemic prevention measures that have been put in place.
From the moment we arrived at the airport, media and athletes were greeted to the sight of staff dressed in full hazmat protective gear – a confronting sight initially but entirely necessary to ensure the bubble was not breached.
It's said that major events often take place in metaphorical bubbles, but this time the bubble had a very real cage around it, complete with signs warning us not to cross into the outside world.
Those measures are without a doubt a necessity, but no less frustrating because of it, sadly stopping media from being able to explore one of the world's most exciting and historic cities.
As an example, the Great Wall can be seen from our hotel in Zhangjiakou, lit up against the night sky, one of the world's most astonishing ancient structures so tantalisingly close, yet completely beyond our reach.
That certainly served to detract from what might be considered a full Olympic experience, the opportunity to fully explore the host city or interact with spectators, finding out more about a culture too often demonised by the Western media.
Instead, journalists were invited to log in for virtual tours from the comfort of the media centre. Not many takers, thanks.
That being said, the tough measures have proven popular among the athletes, the ones who actually count most in all this.
Many of the athletes said they've never felt safer from testing positive than at any other time during the pandemic – aside from those who tested positive, that is, who were placed into quarantine and some of whom missed their events.
And those athletes have stepped up in a big way, with countless performances that will go down in history.
You can reel off countless stunning displays: Ayumu Hirano finally completing the famed triple cork as part of a competition run in the men's snowboard half-pipe, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott becoming New Zealand's first Winter Olympic gold medallist in snowboard slopestyle, and Ireen Wüst winning individual gold at a fifth consecutive Winter Olympics on the speed-skating track to name but three.
Then there were the home favourites, such as 18-year-old Su Yiming winning gold in the snowboard big air — after an admitted scoring error saw him claim silver in the slopestyle – and celebrating emotionally with his Japanese coach Yasuhiro Sato, Xu Mengtao's wild celebrations after winning the women's aerials, and Eileen Gu's spectacular trinity of two golds and a silver across the park and pipe freestyle skiing events.
Again though, COVID-19 reared its disruptive head, with some of the most brilliant performances seen in winter sports played out in front of sparsely occupied stands due to capacity restrictions placed on all events.
The COVID-19 restrictions have obviously affected the overall tenor of this Olympic experience, but it would be unfair and short-sighted to let that define what has been a thoroughly entertaining Games.
Even with temperatures in the mountains regularly hovering around -20 degrees Celsius, dropping below -30 when the wind chill was considered — that's when it's cold enough to turn breath into frost and cause your eyelashes to freeze together, if you're interested — the athletes continued to step up.
For all the fearmongering about the safety of the artificial snow, I've not come across a single athlete complaining about snow conditions, with most praising the snow as perfect for what they were trying to achieve.
The environmental impact of creating so much artificial snow should not be ignored, even if organisers are likely to tout this Games as being the second in a row to achieve carbon neutrality when the post-Games sustainability report is released.
There are rightly some issues with the way that has been achieved — such as carbon credits and reforestation — but Beijing has contributed plenty to the IOC's objectives about creating a global showpiece that is more environmentally friendly by reusing some iconic venues from the 2008 Summer Olympics, while creating something of a new icon in a brownfield site.
For a well-bonded Australian team too, Beijing has been a resounding success. Four medals have been won, the most at a single Winter Olympics.
There were disappointments too, of course, but that's sport.
It was heartbreaking to see utter devastation in the teary eyes of Matt Graham, Laura Peel and others after they did not meet their expectations, their tears being offset by the sheer joy of those that surpassed theirs.
Whether it was Jackie Narracott's irrepressible grin at a silver that was a surprise to everyone but herself, Jakara Anthony's successful pursuit of near-perfection or Tess Coady's infectious joy at not only finally earning redemption four years on from a horribly-timed injury but winning a bronze medal too – not to mention the heartening, delirious excitement from all the women's snowboard competitors delighting in each other's successes.
The disappointment of missing out on a medal, though, pales into insignificance of the genuine tragedy of Kamila Valieva.
The circus of her failed drug test, the inevitable pile on from the IOC, ISF and WADA – whose initial failings in providing a timely analysis of the sample helped inflate this issue in the first place – and the even more inevitable succumbing of Valieva to the pressure was a tough, tough watch.
There is plenty of blame to be apportioned – not least to the "chilling" entourage surrounding Valieva — but at the heart of the whole sorry tale is a 15-year-old girl who has never looked more depressingly alone on the big stage.
The IOC's biggest challenge now is to ensure that what's left of this talented teenager is not thrown to the wolves and forgotten as just another victim of systemic doping.
It shouldn't be the biggest takeaway from what has been an excellent sporting Olympics, but neither should it be forgotten.
