On the couch / Men and women in action, not cherubs

So the Beijing Games are upon us at last, another of those wonderful four-year opportunities to revel in excellence, the chance to laud the unimaginable in human endeavor, commitment and physical skill, a fortnight to uplift spirits, to lift us out of the ordinary in celebration of the extraordinary.

I greet the Games, however, a chastened man. Ever since the International Olympic Committee decided to award the Games to Beijing and allow the Chinese their coming-out party as the superpower of the 21st century, I admit to an innate hostility. Then along comes a single TV report, and moral certitude is destroyed in a stroke.

Zion Nanos of Channel 2 was out in the Beijing streets with the huge crowds who'd waited hour upon long hour in the heat and smog in the hope of catching just a glimpse of the Olympic torch on the final leg of its journey to today's opening ceremony. All the cant harbored with affection is rudely shoved aside by Zion's hardy Chinese declaring the significance of the day, desperate to inform the world that they are not the enemy but "just like people everywhere," telling us how important it was for them to be part of this historic moment. But, protested Zion, you saw the Olympic flame pass by for precisely two seconds - surely you felt cheated for the long hours spent in the blazing sun? Oh, absolutely not, said a smiling young man in halting but understandable English, "I feel privileged."

There was another splendid little insight in the report: When a phalanx of blue-suited policemen try (unsuccessfully) to keep a tight rein on the crowd and seek to shove them out of the way, the patient people of Beijing proceed to take them on, several remonstrating that they'd been waiting for hours. They simply would not be moved. "It was something you'd have been most unlikely to witness before these Olympics," observed Zion wisely, "regular Chinese folk prepared to go toe to toe with security people."

For the Olympics to be able to live up to our high expectations, I'd also been arguing for a curtailing of the overbearing stress on national pride - on hosting nations attempting to project themselves to the world in the best possible light through their games. Contesting that there is no such thing as "China's Games," that there really should be no specific nation's games - the Olympics belong to us all, and any attempt by the hosts to co-opt them in the service of national interests is misguided at best, disastrous at worst, and in any event an affront to the universal Olympic spirit.

Now comes Zion and his people on the streets and I have to concede that IOC President Jacques Rogge, much criticized for the original decision to award the games to Beijing, might have been right after all when he predicted that these Olympics are going to be "a catalyst for change in China, a force to promote social evolution in China."

The fortnight ahead offers us an all-embracing opportunity to test these rival views about the educational and moral standards of sports. For that, of course, we need to take the Olympics seriously, dedicating ourselves not only to willing on and cheering on those who represent flag and motherland, but to seeing whether the Olympics are indeed as inspirational as they were intended to be by their ancient and modern creators alike. This ambitious purpose is problematic on two very perfunctory levels:

Scope: Yes, it's true that over 30 different sports are being contested, but why not go wider still? Recently, a row erupted over whether Japanese commercial interests had, through astutely delivered bribes, prompted the inclusion of a special kind of event in the cycling competition. In contrast, one can literally hear the gnashing of baseballers' teeth and the grinding of softballers' gums over the fact that from 2012 in London, the Games will be shorn of their favorite sports.

Include them all, I say. Rather than limiting the number of sports in the Olympics, why not spread the net to encompass just as many sports as possible?

Not so far perhaps as such weird and wonderful events at the tug-of-war, club swinging, underwater swimming without taking a stroke and pigeon shooting (all of which you may be surprised to hear were once in the Olympics), but certainly for the inclusion of genuine contemporary favorites like baseball, golf, rugby, cricket and squash.

Phil Mickelson was spot on when insisting that golf has enough of a global following to merit inclusion: "Having golf an Olympic sport is exponentially more important to our game than the Majors," said Phil before teeing off as favorite in yesterday's PGA.

Time span: Even as we settle into our seats in anticipation of a thrilling fortnight's viewing, why not admit up front that two weeks are far too short. Similarly, four years are too long to have to wait for the world's greatest sporting jamboree to come round again. What about the Games every other year and for a full month?