After 12 days of competitions, the ninth All Africa Games came to an end on Monday night in the Algerian capital as Egypt topped the medal table with 74 golds and 199 overall.
Over 20,000 Algerians, along with their Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, attended the simple closing ceremony held at the capital's July 5 main stadium.
Rogge, who arrived here on Friday after being absent from the opening ceremony, said in his short speech that the ninth All Africa Games, opened on July 11, had testified to the capabilities of the African sports.
He expressed his gratitude to African athletes' good performance during the Games by saying, "Thank you, you are wonderful!"
According to the Games' organizing committee, the ninth All Africa Games, with 27 disciplines, drew a total of some 8,000 competitors from 52 African nations. It was the second time for Algeria to host the All Africa Games, which the oil-rich nation had also hosted in 1978.
After 12 days of gold hunting, Egypt, a long-time African sports power, topped the medal table with 74 gold medals, the first time since 1991 when Egypt hosted the fifth edition of the four-yearly Games in Cairo.
But it was also the fifth time for the populous northern African Arab nation to gain the top position in the whole history of the All Africa Games, which was first begun in 1965 in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo.
Host nation Algeria ranked the second place on the table with 70 golds and 205 medals in total, which was the best achievement for Algeria in the Games' history besides 1991 when it also finished in the second.
South Africa ranked third with 61 golds and 180 overall. Nigeria, which hosted and topped the medal table in 2003 at the eighth edition of the Games, followed South Africa with 50 golds and 159 medal in total. Tunisia finished in the fifth place with 48 golds.
As traditional sports powers in Africa, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, Nigeria and Tunisia still dominated the continent's most important sports feast, dubbed the Africa's Olympics.
The All Africa Games is a regional multi-sports event held every four years, one year before the Olympic Games. The quadrennial event has not only come of age, but also has become an Olympic gathering for the entire continent.
For African nations, the ninth All Africa Games has certainly provided a good opportunity for them to assess their achievements in sports and find more sports talents. It also offered them a good venue to make preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games.
Besides, the Games' competitions had brought much fun and happiness to audiences from Algeria and other African nations, although there were some minor problems in the game organization, which were faulted by other nations' media.
The tenth All Africa Games will be held in 2011 in Lusaka, capital of Zambia.
Source: Xinhua
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