KEY POINTS:
Every four years, it's the same. I fulminate against the Olympics. I mutter about the drugs cheats and wonder aloud how anyone can take the Games seriously.
They should be handing out medals to the scientists who come up with new and innovative ways for the athletes to avoid drug tests, I say to anyone who'll care to listen. And so on. And so forth.
Then slowly, insidiously, Games fever takes hold. I certainly don't sit through the opening ceremony but, if the telly's on, I might just take a quick peek at the entertainment.
And I generally just happen to be passing through the living room when the New Zealand athletes have entered various stadia over the years.
And if a Kiwi team or individual happens to be doing well, I'll follow them. And if they make a final, I'm hooked.
Sarah Ulmer and that smile. The two Kiwi triathletes battling it out for first and second in Athens, Valerie Vili, all powerful and majestic.
I become an expert on fencing or three-day eventing or beach volleyball or whichever sport the new Olympics darling happens to be competing in.
And I sing along lustily to our national anthem whenever our flag's run up the pole. There's even the glint of a tear.
There's something about the Olympic ideal - the idea that you can "build a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind, in a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play" - that seems to overcome the drug cheats, the jingoism and the sponsors and make idealists of us all.
