Expect a Summer Games unlike any other
OLYMPICS
The grand buildup, political overtones, media frenzy and sheer number of athletes and competitions combine for an extravaganza for the ages in Beijing.
BEIJING -- While few were noticing -- perhaps because it is impossible to see much through the milky white cloud that passes for air here -- some people were engaged in the activity that is the presumed essence of the Olympic Games.
Sports competition.
As has been the case in recent Olympics, the soccer tournament kicked off in outposts far from the host city a couple days before the opening ceremony, which will be a technological and cultural extravaganza involving what may seem like half the inhabitants of the world's most populous country.
Once China has welcomed the world with the now traditional opening ceremony mixture of history lesson and chauvinistic chest-thumping, the 10,000 athletes in 27 sports other than soccer finally will get down to the business of trying to win one of the 931 medals at stake over the next 16 days.
Never has there been an Olympics with a buildup like this, and that doesn't even include the construction that has thoroughly transformed Beijing or the two main sports facilities that already are grandiloquent architectural landmarks, the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium and the "Water Cube" aquatics venue.
The thousands of drumbeats that are to herald the start of the opening ceremony may sound like faint echoes compared with the antiphonal drumbeat of criticism and defense regarding pollution, human rights and censorship that has rattled the upcoming Olympics for most of this year.
"We are extremely eager for the Games to start," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said today. "It is the excitement an athlete feels before a competition, when he or she has done everything possible to be ready."
Beginning Saturday, the splash of arms in water, the whir of bicycle wheels, the thump of feet landing on gymnastics mats and the squeak of sneakers on hardwood floors will create noise that Olympic officials can only hope resonates across the globe the way the loud discourse has.
By Saturday morning, China likely will have won the first of what most expect to be more gold medals than any of the other 204 national teams in Beijing.
By Saturday afternoon, when cyclists have finished a road race over a demanding 152-mile course, there will be evidence of whether the quality of the air has affected athletes in an endurance event.
"If I had the chance of not breathing, I wouldn't want to," U.S. cyclist David Zabriskie said after a training ride today.
