By our standards, a torrent of gold - more than the Germans, Australians and Russians. Subdue, for a second, that inevitable British response: "It can't last." Maybe not, but a small dance of pleasure is called for. The girls and the boys done good. But after the dance, let's pause to ask what any of it means.

For there will be plenty who'll say that these were mostly not "real sports" and so not "real medals". Still more will reflect on the awesome organisation and impeccable glitz of Beijing, and worry whether in 2012 we can match that in London. Can Britain any longer produce a games which is not some kind of national humiliation of soaring costs, political infighting, transport mayhem and security mania?

If a lot of our medals come from cycling and water sports, well that just reflects the country. You can barely move for lycra-clad loons. By the sea this week I watched amazing kitesurfing and windsurfing acrobatics. If the Britain that won medals in dressage is being replaced by a Britain winning them for canoeing and sprint cycling, that is, on balance, rather cheering.

It's easy to mock the Olympics. There is grandiose over-claiming by commentators who pretend that every tenth of a second improvement on the track, or unexpected wobble of a bicycle wheel, is a deathless triumph of the human spirit, or tragic moment worthy of Shakespeare. At times you have to laugh.

But you have to be astonished too. For alongside the pomposity and hype, this is still an event where people from all backgrounds - Kenyan highlands to Californian colleges, Russian industrial towns to Chinese farms - achieve a dream that will glow around them and their families, for the rest of their lives. In a world mostly organised for war and business, it is a rare global celebration of peaceful, personal striving and talent.

It is absolutely true that there is nothing fair about Olympic-level sport. The top competitors are single-minded, driven people who have often been given the best training, nutrition and coddling money can buy. A few are physically blessed, with abnormal skeletons and musculature that give them a huge advantage. It's simply sentimental nonsense to say that anyone who worked hard enough could take on Michael Phelps in the pool, or Usain Bolt on the track.

But almost all prizes are "unfair". Nobel peace prizes aren't available to most people either. Not every kid can win the sack race. I couldn't write a Booker-winning novel however long I sat at the keyboard. But prizes and competition raise our sights.

Scientists dream of recognition and work longer hours because of them; authors try harder; companies compete for pieces of plastic with engraved names, handed out at drunken award dinners. All this is human nature, and part of how we try to do better.

The Olympics are just the same. They provoke children, and adults, into running, swimming, cycling, jumping and rowing. They give the ordinary heroes, and draw us a little way after them. They remind us what hard work, dedication and skill can do. They provide stories about heartache and bravery - Paula Radcliffe - and giving something back - Kelly Holmes. And by doing that, they change millions of people's lives far away from grand stadiums.

Take, for instance, the ludicrous and offensive suggestion that overweight children should be taken into care because obesity is a form of "child abuse". (If it is, then removing children from their parents is a worse one.) The real way to fight child obesity is through food education, yes, but also sport.

Looking around at all the lean kids in coloured shirts, even I can see that Manchester United or Liverpool do more to stop British boys being too fat than any government programme.

What the glamour of football does for millions of boys needs to be matched for other boys, and for girls. Decent swimming pool provision, more sports fields for schools and national coaching schemes are the minimum follow-up which keep the Olympics alive when the games have stopped. If you want children from working-class backgrounds to be given better opportunities, sport - with its glamour, its prizes, its characters - is a vital part of the story.

So, what finally of our "uh-oh" reaction to the challenge of London 2012? The mild chaos at Athens, never mind the terrorist attack at Munich and the various boycotts over the decades, give just a hint of what can go wrong. With so much concrete still to be poured, so much money involved, and the increasingly dangerous politics of this youthful century, the London organisers have plenty to worry about.

They will have to do their best at a time when we are dangerously close to believing that in Britain, nothing works, and nothing ever will. We can't set up and run computer systems for the NHS, nor build large public works on time or to budget. We can't move around our main cities in reasonable order nor educate most of our children properly. And we have the gall to think we can run the Olympics? Sotto voce, in a million kitchens, the mutter begins: "Remember the Dome." (And after all, the London Olympics are the legacy of Tony Blair, the man whose irrepressible optimism took such a fall on Millennium night.)

So now do we secretly believe it would have been better for us had Paris won? Bringing the Olympics here will be a huge challenge. We have become almost self-hating as a country, mentally prepared to fail, too quick to sneer. Yes, the 2012 games need better public administration, and a stronger sense of public good, as against private self-enrichment. But there are plenty of people out there who will lend a hand, and officials will work fiendishly hard, if only out of a rising sense of terror at the consequences of failure.

Things will go wrong. They always do. We won't have the military precision of the Chinese because, thank God, we are a disputatious democracy. If we have a singer with a golden voice and a plain face, she'll sing. Our protestors and our derelicts will be in plain view. Our mass choreography will be, I expect, hilariously dodgy.

But we can run a reasonably efficient, welcoming, good-humoured games if we choose to. We did it in the immeasurably bleaker, harder year of 1948. If we do this, it will light up the lives of tens of millions of British people, who will grow up just a little fitter, stronger, more fulfilled and happier as a result. And if that's not a reasonable political aspiration, I don't know what is.

jackie.ashley@theguardian.com