The Summer Olympics: Ready...Set... ...Sydney

Sport at its highest level is a pure rush to the edge of human capability. How often do we get to watch mankind at its absolute best? We hear a composer's symphony or see the scar from a brilliant surgeon's operation, but we seldom see these men and women at the moment of supreme achievement. Sport provides one of the rare theaters where these moments can be glimpsed, and the Olympics are its gaudiest stage, where more records are set and broken than at any other athletic event in the world. By watching athletes like Marion Jones, Michael Johnson and Ian Thorpe push out the boundaries of human achievement, don't we also grow a little bit? Our very sense of what is possible expands by just a sixteenth of an inch or a hundredth of a second or even by the very staging of the Games. We are not only faster or stronger than we thought, we are also more indomitable of spirit and hopeful of forgiveness, more willing to ignore past conflicts and yesterday's hatreds. We grow by merely participating.

Yet if the Olympics happened every year or always in the same city, they wouldn't be so much fun. We save up our enthusiasm during the off years, developing a hungry curiosity not just for the Games but also for the place. The first Olympics of the millennium will be held in Sydney, Australia, a Pacific Rim capital city. Its spectacular harbor and opera house are among the world's most dramatic settings, superbly fit for what will unfold next week. The harbor is also the site of a signature Australian event, the triathlon, a lung-burning triad of swimming, cycling and running that will be making its Olympic debut. That Australia's famous sharks may be counted as spectators simply highlights the fact that this is a country and a continent still brimming with frontier spirit. They like a challenge here.

Australia is a land peopled first by Aborigines, forcibly resettled by Europeans, and then remade by immigrants from all over the world. A new wave of immigrants--some 10,000 athletes from 200 nations--will now descend on it to participate in 300 events, which will be covered by an astounding 21,000 journalists. You can tell yourself you won't watch, but you will. Call it the Olympic spirit, call it the love of good television, call it being a sucker for a good race, game, match or fight. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls--and the children we all become as we get lost in the spectacle--turn your attention to Sydney, where for 17 days this fall we will see one hell of a race. The human race.

Sure, it's easy to forget what is glorious about the Games, especially in non-O years. There are times when the five linked rings--supposed to represent the harmonious union of continents--seem to symbolize instead the tawdry connections between sport and so many of society's baser attributes. We read all the time about the scandals. Doping. Tainted records. Bribery. Boycotts. And in Olympics immemorial, racism and sexism. We begin to wonder why we ever made such a big deal of the Olympics.