Images of the Beijing sky-line, seemingly bathed in a soup of smog and haze have been never far from the world's TV screens over recent days and weeks. International reporters with hand-held air pollution detectors have been popping up on street corners checking the levels of soot and dust. Everyone seems keen to prove that the city's air will be a decisive and debilitating factor for one of the world's most high profile sporting events.

Without doubt Beijing is facing a huge challenge. There are real and understandable concerns for the health of competitors, especially those in endurance and long distance events such as cycling and the marathon. But the current frenzied focus is marked by a modicum of amnesia - air pollution was a major concern in Los Angeles 24 years ago.

Indeed few can forget the dramatic scenes at the end of the women's marathon when the Swiss competitor was seen staggering and stumbling under the weight of heat and perhaps air pollution exhaustion. Air quality was also an issue for the subsequent games in, for example Atlanta, Barcelona, Seoul and Athens.

In respect to 2008, some level of fair play should be part of the debate. Real and hopefully long lasting achievements have been made by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, the city as a whole; the government and the six provinces concerned. Ones all the more remarkable when set against the city's double-digit economic growth and the fact that this is being staged in a developing, rather than developed economy with all the social, health, developmental and environmental challenges this entails.