Olympic Spirit

The Gloria Dei retirement communities held their first Senior Olympics on Saturday at Gloria Dei Farms in Willow Grove. The competition categories ranged from pinochle and poker to shuffleboard and relay races.

What has happened to the Greek Olympics? Athens is hosting the 2004 Games, but it (too willingly) is paying a terrible price in cultural defilement. What Greece has done to Greece for the sake of the games is a good measurement of how far the original ideal of the Olympics has fallen. The original Olympics were held near Mount Olympus, home of the gods in Greek mythology. Athens had nothing to do with the ancient Olympics. Modern Athens has even less. This city-without-a-plan is a cement megalopolis choking the Acropolis to death.

The worst assault on the Olympics since 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were slain by Palestinian guerrillas 24 years ago in Munich made a somber occasion yesterday on Day 9 of the Atlanta Olympic Games. But like the Games they aspire to win, athletes are nothing if not resilient, and they went on to recapture the Olympian spirit by increments, from one venue to the next. Among the more noteworthy: British rower Steve Redgrave became only the fourth athlete to win four consecutive Olympic titles when he teamed with Matthew Pinsent for the 100th time and won a closely fought men's pairs without coxswain final by half a length.

James Blake could shrug off the three match points he failed to convert, and even the misfire on an easy forehand that would have given him a berth in the Olympic final. What stuck in his craw was the notion his opponent didn't play fair. Blake came up one shot short yesterday, losing in a tennis semifinal to Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 4-6, 7-5, 11-9. Afterward he accused Gonzalez of failing to give up a disputed point two games before the finish. "I've spoken all week about how much I've enjoyed the Olympic experience, how much I love the spirit of it," Blake said.

Technicolor dragon dancers swirl down decorated avenues. Diverse throngs of people enjoy succulent pot stickers and bowls of hot, sticky rice purchased from street carts. Excitement builds as the audience counts down to the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. And the best part? You can experience this Olympic-like scene and fervor without buying an expensive plane ticket and traveling the 7,000 miles to Beijing. The Summer Games begin at 8:08:08, Beijing time, tonight, 8/08/08.

The Summer Games came to an end last night as they began two weeks ago, with a splashy stage show at Olympic Stadium that tested the patience and eardrums of spectators nearly as much as the competitions had tested the athletes. In handing the Olympic flag and entrusting the Olympic tradition to the city of Sydney, Australia, for the 2000 Games, Atlanta loosened its hold on an event that has remade the city in several ways - some of them even pleasant. Atlanta will be remembered for many things, and, regrettably, the Centennial Park pipe bomb is chief among them.

Like any great athlete, Motoichi Godo didn't mind admitting that, yes, he had been nervous before the big event, but that couldn't stop him from performing. "I was nervous as I climbed the stairs," Godo said yesterday, "but as soon as I started pounding the bell, I feel better. I even pounded more than I was supposed to. " The bell in question is an enormous 329-year-old ringer that hangs in a small side pagoda at Zenkoji Temple, the cultural and religious centerpiece of both Nagano City and the 18th Winter Olympics.

The killer in the ski-mask, that assassin with the machine gun cradled in his left arm ... that terrorist on the balcony of the dormitory that housed the Israeli athletes and coaches ... that madman barking demands to the wide-eyed woman in the pastel jacket, armed only with a walkie-talkie ... I stood 40 yards away, on a hillside, peering through a chain-link fence, watching the 1972 Munich Olympics crumble into tragedy. The fence wasn't even child-proof. In an effort to represent joy and youth and carefree spirits and human dimensions, the Olympic security people wore sky-blue and peach-colored uniforms.

For the people of Atlanta, the Olympic Games last summer concluded a journey that started as that city's dream more than a decade before. And for some of the athletes - such as freestyle wrestler Vadim Bogiyev, who won a gold medal for Russia - the Games marked the end of their personal journey. But for many, many others, including the U.S. women who won the gold medal in soccer, the journey is far from over as they resume their athletic pursuits in other competitions. The rekindling of the Olympic spirit - and the flame - is only 14 months away, with the Winter Games of Nagano, Japan, in February 1998.

Many important facts were established yesterday when the United States basketball team held a news conference. A merciless grilling at the hands of predominantly foreign media, many with Olympic hats they wanted autographed, revealed that: Michael Jordan is not a god. Christian Laettner - what a relief - is not yet sick of the Olympics. The Indians did not dine with Custer (more on this). The Dream Team definition of Olympic spirit: Clobber your opponent!

LONDON - The U.S. women's soccer team made no secret of the fact that Thursday's gold-medal showdown with Japan was a grudge match since Japan beat the Americans in penalty kicks in last summer's World Cup final. And, after their 2-1 win before a crowd of more than 80,000 at Wembley Stadium, the women learned that payback can make you rich. That's because each U.S. athlete who wins a gold medal in the London Games gets a cash reward of $25,000 from the United States Olympic Committee.

As I watched the many Olympic events Wednesday, in addition to feeling completely inadequate and out of shape, I kept asking myself which sport has the fittest athletes. I watched the Ukrainian women in the quadruple sculls just sit in their sliver of a boat after winning the gold, silent and spent and sublime. Same for the gold-medal Germans in the men's eight a few moments later, after a flat-out sprint for nearly six minutes pulling thousands of pounds of water. Who could be more fit?

U.S. GOALKEEPER Hope Solo is at it again. On Saturday, she blasted Brandi Chastain on Twitter after the former U.S. player - now a commentator for NBC - criticized the way the Americans played in their 3-0 win over Columbia. "Its 2 bad we cant have commentators who better represents the team&knows more about the game," tweeted Solo. Solo also wrote that Chastain should refrain from talking about defense and goalkeeping "until you get more educated" and noted that "the game has changed from a decade ago. " Chastain, perhaps best known for jubilantly removing her jersey after scoring the winning penalty kick in the World Cup final in 1999, defended her criticism.

The killer in the ski-mask, that assassin with the machine gun cradled in his left arm ... that terrorist on the balcony of the dormitory that housed the Israeli athletes and coaches ... that madman barking demands to the wide-eyed woman in the pastel jacket, armed only with a walkie-talkie ... I stood 40 yards away, on a hillside, peering through a chain-link fence, watching the 1972 Munich Olympics crumble into tragedy. The fence wasn't even child-proof. In an effort to represent joy and youth and carefree spirits and human dimensions, the Olympic security people wore sky-blue and peach-colored uniforms.

Here's how the Olympic tally sheet for the United States read Thursday afternoon: 27 gold medals, 83 overall medals, 140,000 new enemies. The entire populace of the tiny Caribbean island of Netherlands Antilles apparently is angry with America. They think we're tattletales who cost them their one chance for a medal at these Summer Olympics. "I didn't get any sleep," said Imro Van Wilgen, general secretary of the Netherlands Antilles Olympic Committee (NAOC), during a news conference yesterday.

James Blake could shrug off the three match points he failed to convert, and even the misfire on an easy forehand that would have given him a berth in the Olympic final. What stuck in his craw was the notion his opponent didn't play fair. Blake came up one shot short yesterday, losing in a tennis semifinal to Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 4-6, 7-5, 11-9. Afterward he accused Gonzalez of failing to give up a disputed point two games before the finish. "I've spoken all week about how much I've enjoyed the Olympic experience, how much I love the spirit of it," Blake said.

Dog shootings Thank you for taking a stand on last month's killing of 80 dogs by kennel owners in Kutztown ("Shooting the dogs: Grisly business," Aug. 14). There can be no possible excuse for the Pennsylvania legislature not to pass a law to prevent such shootings immediately. This is a cruel, disrespectful way to treat dumb chickens, let alone a trusting gentle animal that after years of abusive treatment can almost always be rehabilitated to greet human beings with a wag and a hopeful expression.

Technicolor dragon dancers swirl down decorated avenues. Diverse throngs of people enjoy succulent pot stickers and bowls of hot, sticky rice purchased from street carts. Excitement builds as the audience counts down to the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. And the best part? You can experience this Olympic-like scene and fervor without buying an expensive plane ticket and traveling the 7,000 miles to Beijing. The Summer Games begin at 8:08:08, Beijing time, tonight, 8/08/08.

What has happened to the Greek Olympics? Athens is hosting the 2004 Games, but it (too willingly) is paying a terrible price in cultural defilement. What Greece has done to Greece for the sake of the games is a good measurement of how far the original ideal of the Olympics has fallen. The original Olympics were held near Mount Olympus, home of the gods in Greek mythology. Athens had nothing to do with the ancient Olympics. Modern Athens has even less. This city-without-a-plan is a cement megalopolis choking the Acropolis to death.