Let the Games Begin!

Tomorrow night, in Turin, Italy, a flame will roar to life within the Olympic cauldron and for the next few weeks, the world's greatest athletes will enter the most unparalleled competitive maelstrom of which human beings have ever conceived.

I adore the Olympics. Always have. Especially the winter games. In my house the TV doesn't turn off while they're on. Normally, I am only nominally interested in sport, but with the Olympics, I am something else entirely. I am rabid.

I love the music, the pageantry, the rivalry, the sweat, the blood, the tears. They are a sort of liturgy of sport. These games are sacred events, a religious experience set in a cathedral of nature.

There's just something about them. Something magical. Something transcendent. They make me proud to be an American, yes, but more so, proud to be a member of the human race. For these few weeks we set aside our differences and gather to share in the world's glory first, our nation's glory second.

The Olympics are all that is good and honorable and best about our world. We come together in competition, but paradoxically, also in unity. We come together for a greater goal than ourselves. We unite for team. We unite for country. We unite for the world. And for the briefest of seconds on this, our eternal stage, we show what we are capable of. Peace. Unity. Camaraderie. Brotherhood.

In sport, others push us to excel and here, athletes are pushed further and longer than at any other time in their lives. Here, they must last that much longer, press that much harder, hold that much further.

I love watching as men and women test their endurance and the very limits of their bodies and their dreams. I love the spectacle that is competition as sinew and muscle buckle under the pressure, and desire and will strain against defeat and hopelessness. I love witnessing the passion that courses through their veins as victory comes into sight. I love watching bodies sculpted as if from marble, move and dance to a grace and elegance than can only be described as perfection.

We will fall in love with some, cry with others, catch our hearts in our throats with many, always remember a select few. As the human spirit spills onto the snowy slopes of the Italian alps, so will all the human drama, the unfettered optimism and pent-up ambition of so many. They come from all points of the globe. They bring with them a thousand different stories of what it took to get them here. Some will radiate the thrill of victory. Others will swallow the agony of defeat. Some arrive all but clutching a medal. For others, to compete is their crown. And we will cheer them on. All of them.

At the end, there can be only a few who take home the gold. We stand on the podium beside them, convinced that our voices raised in solidarity with their efforts gave them that extra something that allowed them to win. It is foolish, of course. Yet when they drape themselves in that flag, we that feel the warmth. When their medals are placed around their necks, ours feel the weight. For the briefest of moments we too are champions, vicariously basking in the sort of accomplishments than bring honor and glory and pride to us all.

And when the snow dissolves and the ice melts and the stadiums clear, perhaps we can hold onto a fleck of their dreams, achievements and examples and look for some way to become stainless champions in whatever crucible we find ourselves.