Can anyone save the Olympic Games?

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Here we are, less than two weeks out from the start of the Beijing Olympics, and a man's thoughts naturally turn to ... particulates?Yes! Particulates!The gunky stuff that floats in the air!Seems there might be too many particulates floating around in the Olympic air, although that depends on whom you ask."For the key BM 10 (particulates of 10 micrometers or less) Beijing defines its level two standard as 100 microgrammes per cubic meter, compared to 50 for the WHO," reported the British newspaper, The Guardian, and if that sentence won't get you in the Olympic spirit, whatever will?Violence in Tibet?A massive, ambitious and undemocratic host country using the Games to pretty up its image?A crackdown on potential protesters in advance of the Games?More international athletes caught blood doping at the Tour de France, just in case anyone had started to forget the role of cheating in international sports?Jim McKay might struggle to find the right words this time around. And McKay, of course, is gone.So we bear down on the Beijing Olympics wondering if someone, anyone, can save the Games.Not just these Games, either. The very idea of the Olympics. The notion of this two-week competition as something different and better than the rest.Yes, I know. The Olympics have never been all that pure. See Moscow and Berlin.But the Olympics still START ITALS felt END ITALS different, from the first trumpet note introducing the first Olympic broadcast until the very last.We gathered around our television sets to watch it. Practically all of us did.We'd watch swimming and track and gymnastics and whatever else was on.It didn't matter if it was a school night. It didn't matter if it was on late. All the usual restrictions on television watching were suspended for the duration.Because it was the Olympics. What else had to be said?So we watched Mark Spitz swim for his seven gold medals.We watched Mary Lou Retton get her perfect 10.We watched Greg Louganis win gold after banging his head against the diving board.And -- if we're being honest here -- isn't it hard to imagine watching these Games with the same sense of wonder and awe?Maybe it's the relentless commercialism. Is an Olympic moment still an Olympic moment after it's supersized?Maybe it's the blood doping and the steroids. How can we possibly know if what we're watching in the pool or on the track is real? Maybe it's the new, every-two-years Olympic schedule. Didn't we just have an Olympics in Turin, like, yesterday?Maybe it's the messy, chaotic state of the world. This year's Olympic slogan is One World, One Dream. Which is a flat out lie. A certain part of the world dreams of the United States in cinders. How do we overlook that?We will try, at least. Because it's the Olympics. And it's possible, after the Games begin, it will feel like the Olympics once again. This is the hope for anyone who has loved the event over the years. That once the competition gets started, everything else will fade to background.Of course all the stories are about politics and pollution right now. Nothing has happened yet.Kerri Strug hasn't stuck the landing on a bum ankle. Cathy Freeman hasn't won the 400-meter dash. Rulon Gardner hasn't beaten the unbeatable Russian giant.Those are the moments that make the Olympics that elevate it in our memories. Two weeks before Sydney, nobody had heard of Gardner. Now he's one of the figures who embody the games.What these games need is a Gardner. Or a Beamon or a Jenner or a Comaneci.We need someone to jump higher, someone to run faster, someone to make us see the wonder through the haze.What these Olympics need are Olympians. Blessedly, they're on the way.(Geoff Calkins writes for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn.)