And it's not just about the smart use of Games infrastructure. Most importantly it continues to be about engaging Londoners - in fond memories of a summer now three years gone as well as in participation in healthy activity.

Last weekend it was the Anniversary Games at the newly re-furbished main stadium. The three-day track and field competition is chosen as the centrepiece of the nostalgia program as it most easily recalls both the Olympics and Paralympics.

Despite last Sunday's poor weather, more than 15000 spectators paid to see their para-athlete heroes from London and those who have emerged since. This would not happen anywhere else.

This weekend it's a freebie for the spectators with the London-Surrey Classic - a replication and more of the 2012 Games road cycling event. For the elite men there is a 100-mile road race, for the women - a criterium, a 15-mile event for the world's top hand cyclists and for 25,000 serious punters a chance to follow the top men around the streets of the city and the countryside of Surrey.

For the lesser prepared enthusiast, as many as 70,000 of whom were estimated, there was a "freecycle" in central London yesterday.

And there is no soft option being taken here.

There were serious road closures yesterday in the city and even more over a much greater area today. And the public, at least most of them, accept the inconvenience because the legacy thing is done so well.

Led by the British riders, the athletes also take it on, no doubt also encouraged by the highest prizemoney pool for a one-day classic. Not being a world tour event, there is some flexibility in how teams are made up.

Bradley Wiggins, absent from this year's Tour de France whilst he concentrates on a return to the track for the 2016 Rio Olympics, will debut his own team. Countryman Mark Cavendish is equally keen to be part of the show after missing last year's edition due to injury.

Australia will be well represented in the field as well.

Meanwhile the voting members of the International Olympic Committee decided to take a safe course and engage in a little nostalgia itself by opting to award the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing.

In the end it was by a much narrower margin than had been anticipated, with just four votes separating the 2008 Summer Games host from its only rival - Almaty in Kazakhstan. The choice was depicted as being between the latter's modern innovative approach in Games delivery and a safe option presented by a known entity.

Whether it was a fear that even seven years hence a mankini-inspired opening ceremony might be too much, the IOC took the conservative course and provided Beijing with the most explicit of legacies - another Games.

Mind you, there was almost instantaneous doubt, with an indication that the Chinese might be asked to revamp the plans as presented in their bid to make them look more like those from the Kazakhs!