Chinese girls perform at the closing ceremony of the 10th National Games in Nanjing yesterday. -Xinhua

The 10th National Games, a rehearsal for the 2008 Olympic Games to be held in Beijing, closed in Nanjing yesterday after 12 days of hectic competition.
Premier Wen Jiabao declared the Games closed at the Olympic Sports Complex.
With the Beijing Olympics less than three years away, the quadrennial sports meet, billed as China's mini-Olympics, was widely regarded as a rehearsal for the 2008 extravaganza.
Host Jiangsu Province topped the medals' standings with 56 golds, followed by Guangdong with 46 and the Chinese Army with 44.
Six world records were broken at the Games and six others were equalled. Five Asian records were also rewritten and another five leveled.
The 10th Games, the largest ever in history and the first for which the host was decided by bidding, attracted 9,986 athletes and featured 32 sports, including all 28 summer Olympic sports.
Not unexpectedly, all eyes at the Games were on Shanghai native Liu Xiang, the most striking sports figure in the country, who won China's first men's track-and-field Olympic gold last year in Athens in the men's 110 meters hurdles.
"Honestly, I didn't expect to run so fast in a domestic event. To win is the most important, though I knew I could make it easily," said the 22-year-old after clocking 13.10 seconds to retain his national title.
In weightlifting, a batch of fresh faces showed up while world records were consistently bettered.
Qiu Le, 22, made a strong hit in the men's 62-kilogram category as he hoisted 145 kg in the snatch and 177.5 kg in the jerk for a winning total of 322.5 kg, just 2.5 kg less than what Olympic champion Shi Zhiyong lifted in Athens.
The successful hosting of the Games drew praise from senior officials from international sports associations.
"We have full confidence that China is very capable of staging big sports event. We are very confident that the 2008 Olympic Games will be a great success," said International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge.
"The organizing job here has been excellent, and it reveals that the Beijing Games would be as good or even better," added Francois P Besson, sports director of the International Judo Federation after supervising the Games' judo competitions.
Yet, doping and match-fixing scandals as well as refereeing controversies tainted the Games.
The women's over 78-kg class judo final had to be held again after Olympic champion Sun Fuming of Liaoning deliberately lost to her provincial teammate Yan Sirui, who represented the Chinese Army at the Games.
The match-fixing incident resulted from a regulation especially designed for the Games, aimed at promoting exchange of athletes between provincial teams and the army team.
According to the regulation, if an army athlete wins at the Games, the gold medal will also be counted for his/her native province.
Liu was given a warning after Yan won the rematch and reclaimed the title.
And in the taekwondo competitions, the mat was overshadowed by a flurry of walkovers as 34 out 148 matches were not played while in cycling, a bronze medalist refused to step onto the podium in protest over a disputed result.
The Games also smelt out drugs as star distance runner Sun Yingjie was stripped of her silver medal in the women's 10,000 meters after failing a dope test.
The 11th National Games will be held in Shandong Province in 2009.