Whenever the Denver Broncos get a touchdown, a blonde woman dressed as a cowgirl charges across the pitch astride a white horse waving her arms furiously in celebration. It is doubtful, however, that their mile-high Invesco Field stadium has ever witnessed a spectacle or sent such a roar into the Rocky Mountain night sky as that which greeted Barack Obama.

It was a pulsing, flag-waving, screaming, weeping, beachball-tossing, camera-flashing mass comprised of 84,000 human beings. The chant of “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” rolled around one side, U! S! A!, U! S! A!" across the other.

This was the moment for which they had queued for up to three hours in the heat, passed through endless top-heavy security – was it really necessary for the National Guard to turn up in Humvees? – only to discover that the awful stadium food and overpriced water was in short supply. Unlike Broncos games, there was no beer.

“I think this is, in all probability,” said Jennifer Williams, 26, “the single most amazing thing that has happened to me in my life, ever.” Really? “We’re making history!”

And there he was, illuminated by more than 450 spotlights, striding down a blue-carpeted stage decorated with Classical-style columns made of plywood. Republicans had been busy sneering at the Temple of Obama – “Barackopolis” – advising those attending to wear togas and robes. His advisers denied that the stage was meant to be anything so hubristic. No, it was designed to resemble the White House. So that was all right, then.

Mr Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President in front of a crowd even bigger than that of John F. Kennedy in Los Angeles 48 years ago. The first black man to be nominated by a major party for President, the son of a Kenyan goat herder who spent some his childhood in Indonesia, wanted to tell an Everyman American story.

“In the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton’s Army,” he said. “In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree.

“And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.”

Dozens of A-list celebrities were in the plush sky-boxes to hear him reject John McCain’s charge that he was one of them, perhaps even the biggest of all. “I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me.”

Oprah Winfrey declared: “I cried my eyelashes off, I think it's the most powerful thing I have ever experienced.” The verdict of film director Spike Lee was that this was “bigger than the Super Bowl”.

In fairness, Mr Obama tried to tone it down. He even dared to be dull on occasion, devoting a long passage of his speech to tax-code reform. But he cannot control his dazzle for long. “Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time,” he said. “America, this is one of those moments.”

The speech ended with orange fireworks, confetti and smoke shooting into the air, the boom of music and Mr Obama standing alone for a moment, gazing heavenwards. “Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.”

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