Gone with that thought now; to actually be here is dreamlike enough.

It's where War and Peace opened, where Dostoevsky spent his best days, where Pushkin wrote, and where Tchaikovsky went to school, debuted, lived and was buried! The names alone are sufficient to produce a shivering effect of excitement.

It's as if a hundred Santa Clauses came at once.

Personal recollections and jokes aside, what amazes me most here is the fact that St. Petersburg today is home to not a hundred smiling Santas, but more than 80 Olympic champions.

That means that if it wanted to, it could have an Olympic champion running each of the 80 relay legs allowed per city. It is the only city in the world, outside the Chinese mainland, that could do so.

Perhaps the picturesque canals, islands on the quiet Neva River, white nights and cultural traditions here also gave inspiration to the city's sports stars.

Qu Yingpu, deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily, is spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay

(China Daily April 5, 2008)