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When it only comes one every four years, seventeen days can pass awfully fast for someone like me. But the Beijing Olympics have come and gone, and while most of the feared events never occurred, we did learn quite a bit during this couple of weeks.

To me, the Olympics are about the athletes, and it has to be said that China provided first class facilities for the various competitions. I don’t recall a single athlete complaining about sub-standard conditions, and most said the opposite: that the facilities gave them the best chance of an Olympic caliber performance.

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I’d hoped to post more this past week, but the reality is that there was an overload of work, and I’ve spent many hours watching the Olympics, which has left no time to write about it.

Not that you need my input. In 1996, I may have been the only individual blogging the Olympics, but a dozen years later you can now read blogs by the athletes themselves (and peruse Olympics aggregators, too). Though I am in no way responsible for that, it does make me feel a bit like a great-great-grandfather (not something I need as I approach 50, but strangely satisfying nonetheless).

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If you missed the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics on Friday night, well, there are no words that can convey what you missed. There are some photos, like the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony via The Big Picture at Boston.com, and Best Picks Of Beijing Olympic 2008 Opening Ceremony Images. But, stunning as the photos are, they still do not do the event justice.

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They might be one of the slowest organizations to change with the times, but somehow, after the fiasco of four years ago, the International Olympic Committee is beginning to get a clue:

The International Olympic Committee is for the first time permitting athletes to write blogs.

The IOC has set out guidelines for blogging at the Beijing Games to ensure copyright agreements are not infringed.

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Wednesday was a rather odd day for me. Eric Rudolph returned to Atlanta to plead guilty to three bombings in this city in 1996 and 1997. When I first heard he was coming, a part of me thought of going down to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, where the plea would be made. But I quickly realized that wasn’t what I needed to do today.

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I hate to encourage profiling, but I’m afraid Irish dancers are going to get some extra scrutiny at future sporting events. People are going to want to look up their kilts, for sure.

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...these Games haven’t just provided me with a 16 day respite from stories of Swift Boats and Slow Candidates (though that has been refreshingly welcome). They recharge me. They literally refill me with hope for the human race. And I will take as much of that as I can soak up.

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How could the Olympics be complete without the traditional drunken Irish priest bear hugging the leader of that marathon at the 23 mile point?

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Beaten by a team that’s never won a medal. Beaten by eight points, never closer than six behind, not even fouling at the end to slow the clock and give them even a slim chance of comeback. Beaten like they had no heart. Simply beaten.

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Early on in these Games, I said “One of the sideline sports at every Olympics is the ‘IOC idIOCy Competition.’ And I think we have an early favorite…” I was referring then to the fact the IOC was trying to ban blogging, which, though stupid, didn’t really impact the Games themselves. Well, we seem to have a new contender from slightly outside the IOC…

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The calendar confluence of the Olympics and the 2004 Election has created yet another forum for polarization, another vacuum to be abhorred, another void to be filled as quickly as crack-heads take over an abandoned house.

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Over the past week I’ve collected this small sampling of columns about the “color” of the Games, some of the tone, scenes, and smaller stories you don’t see on TV.

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Oh, I’m not biased. Not at all. The fact that I ran this event in my youth (back when races were measured in yards, not meters, and T-Rex regularly ate our pole vaulters) isn’t why I say the 400 meters is “The Most American Race.” The results speak for themselves…

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It was 102 degrees at the starting line, followed by mile after mile of a hellish hilly course. 26 miles, mostly uphill. Steep hills. The very same course that killed a man of legend, in the original run after the Battle of Marathon. Yet, on Sunday the one who bested this course and field of the world’s finest was a mere 4’10” tall, 90 pounds in weight…

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One of the biggest surprises of these Olympics has been the lack of interest. The lack of attendance. The lack of excitement off the field. The IOC has long attempted to squeeze the life out of things before they even begin, and try to control things they don’t even understand. In the Information Age, they have so many more opportunities to step in it up to their knees.

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Wednesday was the big glamour event. No, not the men’s all round gymnastics competition. I mean the first competition at Olympia since 394 A.D. Sport, returning to the place sport was born. At least, it was the big glamour event for me.

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We all knew it was coming. Some say it’s the reason there are so few spectators. They spent $1.5 billion on security to prevent it. But last night, it struck the Olympics anyway.

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One of the sideline sports at every Olympics is the “IOC idIOCy Competition.” And I think we have an early favorite…

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