KEY POINTS:
It's only a couple of days now. Stand by your sets. The games, and lithe, the athletically gifted, the strong, and graceful, are almost here.
It's time to cry, 'Hi ho, hi ho, and off to the couch we'll go', check the fast food delivery outfits are in the speed dial, new batteries are in the remote and know it won't get better than this.
It's also the cue for lens-hogging pundits, often athletically challenged and non-lithe, for whom grace is said before meals, to shuffle off. Their mission - to issue doom-drenched warnings about the games - is almost done.
This has been so since Munich in 1972, when the horror attack on the Israeli team in Munich in 1972 was a shocking surprise. Since then pundits cover all bets.
Dire warnings were Barcelona's infrastructure would crack under the strain. Ditto for Sydney. Montreal was promised bankruptcy. Commercialism would destroy the Los Angeles and Atlanta events. The Greeks, hosting the first Games after 9/11, could expect terrorists packing every Taverna. Seoul and now Beijing's pollution would bring disaster.
Yes, problems, like Brecht's Mother Courage trundling along behind the great and the powerful, do follow the games. The Olympics are too big not to have them.
Currently, it's the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s breathtaking hypocrisy. It granted the games to Beijing, provided human rights were improved, and now decides denying access to information, a human right, is an internal matter for the Chinese, and no business of the IOC.
Pundits and commentators agonize over such matters, complain bitterly, expose wrongs, make angry broadcasts, and light media fires.
Once that's done we can wait for the wonderful, the rowers, the equestrians, an occasional swimmer, along with Jack Lovelock, Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, and John Walker burning in the memory.
Denis Edwards
Pictured above: Performers dressed up in Chinese traditional warrior costumes, stand in front of the Olympic National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, during a rehearsal prior to the opening of the Olympic Games. (AP Photo / Andy Wong)
