John Ian Wing the school boy who changed the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games forever.

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Picture (1) was my father’s restaurant known as the Kwong Tung Cafe which was situated at 16 Bourke Street Melbourne. Two doors away on the right was the St James Theatre. My bedroom looked out onto the main road (2). Each night after I had finished my homework, I would look out of my bedroom window and watch the people queuing up in a quiet and orderly manner, waiting to buy their tickets.

When the show was over, they would pour out of the theatre in one big mass, spilling out onto the road. If it was a good film, they would be laughing and enjoying themselves and even talking to strangers. It was these scenes which I witnessed most nights that gave me the idea for the closing ceremony.

It was a Thursday when I started writing my letter and I remember getting stuck half way through and I couldn’t finish the letter. I started to gaze out of my bedroom window, looking at the people below waiting to go into the theatre and then I thought, why don’t we have a big party for all the people of Melbourne and the Olympic athletes. But the problem was, where could it be held. Then I remembered reading about the Olympic Games when I was 14 years old and I wondered why the athletes never took part in the closing ceremony.

It suddenly came to me, why don’t we have all the athletes enter the stadium all intermingled as one nation. There will be no separate countries and the athletes must not march but walk freely around the track and wave to the crowd in the stand, and the crowd will stand and cheer and wave to the athletes. And at the end, the crowd will bid farewell to all the athletes.

On the Saturday was the closing ceremony, so I didn’t have time to correct any grammar or spelling errors and I addressed the letter to Mr Kent Hughes (picture 6). By now it was late at night and I took my letter down to the office of the Organizing Committee in Lonsdale Street (3), which was about one kilometre from where I lived, and put it through the letter box.

To follow correct procedure under the rules of the Olympic Charter, it would take over one year to change the format of the closing ceremony. I gave the IOC one day to change the rules.

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John Ian Wing the school boy who changed the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games forever.