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If Only Olympic Spirit Burned Every Day

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 27, 2008

After two lavish ceremonies and more than two weeks of competition, the XXIX Summer Olympic Games in Beijing came to a close on Sunday. American swimmer Michael Phelps will go down as the games' star by winning an unprecedented eight gold medals in a single Olympics, and the "redeem team" helped reestablish the United States as the world's basketball powerhouse.

The emergence of smaller nations like Jamaica, whose sprinters stole the show in track-and-field events, reminded the world that size need not matter. And U.S. sprinters, like their basketball counterparts in 2004, learned the hard way not to take any country for granted.

The overall winner in gold medals was the host country, China, which has ratcheted up its athletic prowess along with its economy. But while commentators stressed that politics has no place in the Olympics, China reminded the world it has a long way to go with human rights.

Before the games began, the Chinese government revoked the visa of former U.S. Olympic speedskater and gold-medal winner Joey Creek, who had planned to speak out about human rights in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and some 2.5 million others have been displaced since 2003. Chinese authorities also blocked Web sites it found politically objectionable.

And questions were raised about the age of some Chinese gymnasts, and whether they were the required 16 years of age. The worldwide audience, like Olympic officials, was left to judge for themselves.

Still, politics never interfered with the games, which were memorable if not, in the words of NBC's Bob Costas, "the most memorable Olympics ever."

"Beyond the competitive drama, every Olympics provides a snapshot of a city and a country at a point and time," Costas said. "This one was more compelling than most, since China's rise and its ongoing transformation is the global story, not only of the moment, but likely of the foreseeable future."

The real story of the Beijing games was that China's totalitarian ways failed to dampen the Olympic spirit. The flame has been extinguished, but the flame of sportsmanship displayed by so many athletes from all over the world continues to burn.

As has been proven many times, the games are bigger than any government.

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