Well, I suppose you have to smell China’s “Harmonious” torch, because you couldn’t see the Olympic Torch Relay if you were in Delhi.

The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion into a tense security operation.

The authorities cordoned off much of the heart of New Delhi for hours before the event, anxious to avoid the disruption that plagued earlier stages of the torch relay and concerned that protesters from India’s large Tibetan community would seize the opportunity to sabotage the occasion. [Emphasis added]

What a joke the Olympic Torch Relay has become.  The only solace that the International Olympic Committee and party elites of the Chinese government can take is that the Relay has become such a humiliating mockery of past Olympic festivities that it’s almost impossible to imagine a situation where the Games themselves are worse than the Relay itself. As much as I might revel in schadenfreude in similarly disastrous Beijing Olympics, I don’t think it’s possible to have a more shameful production of any event than this has been.  What a joke.