So the Games have begun - and with the sort of theatrical splash that has become de rigueur for the opening ceremonies of spectacular global sporting occasions. Only the most determinedly po-faced could have remained unmoved at the sight of Cathy Freeman striding up the stadium steps in Sydney yesterday evening, holding high the Olympic flame. And when she lit the extraordinary circle of fire that emerged from a pool of glistening water, and the flaming cauldron itself rose to assume its perch above Stadium Australia for the next 17 days, it must surely have been a moment of great and emotional pride for all Australians. They are, as Tom Humphries writes today, a people flexing their nationhood. For them, these Games are much more than a mere athletic contest: they are part of a rite of passage to national maturity and global stature. Ms Freeman, who was granted the singular honour of carrying for the last part of its journey a flame first lit in Greece, has an Aboriginal background. Gesture politics, scoff the critics, but the growing problem of racism in this State might benefit from a few thoughtful gestures by those in authority here.
For the next three weeks, 15,000 sportsmen and women will chase the ultimate glory of Olympic gold, bronze and silver - watched by an astonishing 3.7 billion television viewers around the world. The Games are a great festival of athletic prowess. While stories of drug-taking and cheating will always command a headline, the Olympic Games will always be special because they have a special heritage.
The first recorded Olympic champion was Coroebus of Elis, a cook who won the sprint race in 776 BC without, or so we must assume, the help of anabolic steroids. While the widely forgotten Coroebus may be the first recorded champion, he was certainly not the first: the Olympic Games of ancient Greece began at least 3,500 years ago. They were held at Olympia every four years - a time lapse known as an olympiad - in honour of Zeus, the king of all the ancient Greek gods.
The ancient games were at their peak from the 8th to the 2nd centuries BC. During that period, new contests were added to the original running (the length of which was a stade - hence stadium - about 200 metres). The new tests included longer track events, wrestling, the pentathlon, horse racing, and the pankration, a sort of no-holes-barred wrestling (apart from biting and gouging of eyes, which was forbidden). Athletes competed naked but women, sadly, were not permitted to take part. Under the influence of the Romans, the games declined and were eventually abolished in AD 393.
The modern Games owe their origin to a 24-year-old Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who in 1887 decided to revive an ancient ideal; the first modern Games were held, appropriately, in Athens in 1896. And so Ireland's athletes have a great heritage to live up to in Sydney. They will know also that, as they strive for personal and national glory, everyone back home will be willing them on to victory.