There is something magical in the air at an Olympic Games

In all these years, I’ve never met a soul who didn’t have an utterly wonderful time at the Sydney Olympics.

Kerry Wyborn takes one on the helmet in the Japan-Australia softball game in Beijing Picture: Brett Costello

In all these years, I’ve never met a soul who didn’t have an utterly wonderful time at the Sydney Olympics. I’m sure they are out there, those unhappy people who remember the jostling crowds – ah, those were the days – but not what they were crowding for. But they have not crossed my path.

I would be a naive fool if I wasn’t aware of the corruption in the Olympic movement down the years, the crass pocket-lining of men – almost invariably they were men – who felt that the normal rules didn’t apply to them. I’ve seen the hurt and confused look on the faces of genuine athletes as they witnessed a chance meeting between sporting administrators and long-suspected drug cheats, the hugs and backslapping. I’ve seen female athletes almost give themselves whiplash as their heads swivelled violently to look at the gold medallist beside them who had just begun to speak – sounding for all the world like a man. Steroids tend to do that.

So there is no need to dwell on the darker side of Olympic sport. It will reach out and grabs you by the throat anyway, when you least expect it. But that is for another day.

Perhaps it is just the circles I move in, but there was genuine joy in the air in southeast Queensland on Thursday. True, Brisbane being announced as “the preferred bidder” doesn’t have the same zing as “and the winner is…..Syd-en-ee”. And, of course, it is all so premature. There’s presumably many a slip between preferred bidder and confirmed host city – though no one really knows because this is the first time this situation has arisen — so Brisbane was wise to keep its enthusiasm in check.

Remember the scenes back in 1993 where there were television images of massed crowds in Sydney and Beijing as our good friend Juan Antonio Samaranch was about to name the winner of the 2000 Olympics. The moment he gloriously mangled the name of Sydney, there were huge celebrations throughout this country. The cameras naturally all remained on Australia, capturing those scenes of wild excitement. But what happened in China, one wonders? Were they all told to just go home?

So if Brisbane does manage to navigate these next two months without any slip-ups and the IOC session is in place to anoint a winner in Tokyo, let’s have a real celebration planned. Down at South Bank. Everyone can jump in the giant pool to celebrate. Yeah, it will be July, I know, but as far as everyone south of the Tweed is concerned, that’s the perfect time for a dip in Queensland.

But we should celebrate because this is worth celebrating.

As I drove down from the Sunshine Coast to cover the Queensland Reds-Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby AU match at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night, I began to ponder what a southeast Queensland Olympics might mean.

The politicians might boast that one in seven Australians lives in the Games area, but why are they all on the road all at the same time whenever I am doing the commute?

Why isn’t there a high-speed rail link, or at least a higher-speed rail link, connecting the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Toowoomba to Brisbane? If I want to use the existing rail service, I have to drive to Nambour Station, which my GPS informs me is 39 minutes from home. Once there – again, according to Siri — it is a further two hours and four minutes to Brisbane, stopping 17 times along the way. Any time I’m faced with that choice, I invariably decide what the heck and drive the additional 67 minutes to get to the Brisbane CBD. And then I wonder why the roads are crowded.

Infrastructure shortcomings, of course, take many forms. Does anyone from Telstra realise how many times a day phone calls cut out in this region — normally while I am in mid-interview? Or the lights go off on my modem stack while I am attempting to file? We are now two decades into the 21st Century, for goodness sake.

I’m a local. I’ve lived in the southeast corner of Queensland all my life, so I’m am fully paid-up in terms of whinging privileges. That said, I get terribly protective whenever outsiders complain about some of its shortcomings. “Heck, look around you, you’re living in paradise.”

But we’ve got company coming. We’ve invited the world to come around. That’s what an Olympic bid entails. Everything now will carry a little more significance. Even the mundane. Eat Street, where we used to go for a cheap meal … that land will be the site of the Athletes Village, if I’m not mistaken.

Albion, where I may have encountered the dark side of alcohol for the first time, is shaping up as the venue for the main stadium. And in my head, Suncorp has been transformed from a rugby ground to the potential site of the opening ceremony of the XXXIVth Games. XXXIV … they look like leftover numerals from a particularly ruthless game of Scrabble, but that is, in fact, the title the IOC will pretentiously confer on the Brisbane Olympics.

So I confess this is one of the reasons why I lobbied for southeast Queensland to chase these Games. To rectify the infrastructure. That and the fact that Australia has been crying out for some manner of nation-building project since they turned the lights on in the Snowy Mountains.

But there is another reason.

There is — I know no other way of describing this — something magical in the air at an Olympic Games. Everyone feels it, the sense that what they are about to witness will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Journalists probably feel it less than anyone, because they are working so hard. But even they have their moments.

I’m often asked what is my favourite memory from the last eight Games I have covered and I readily roll out stories of Kieren Perkins’s swim in Atlanta or the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay in Sydney.

But if I really think about it, I find myself drawn to the women’s softball semi-final in Beijing in 2008. My wife briefly played for Australia in that sport and I remember phoning her to say I could hear the buzz on the ball whenever the batter fouled off a pitch. Naturally, she told me how much she hated me at that particular moment.

To say that the match had reached a climax was to sell the situation short. It was the bottom of the final innings, two out and a full count. Steve Waugh, in his role as an Australian team mentor, had slipped in beside me in the press tribunes. (Yes, we do get spoiled with our seating.)

I can’t remember the name of the Australian batter. I could possibly look it up but in my mind she could have been anyone in the team. So let’s leave it that way.

The pitcher – the one who would eventually pitch Japan to a gold medal win over the USA – hurled in that fateful ball. The world froze. The Australian batter swung slowly to meet it, timing it as sweetly as I can ever remember Greg Norman hitting a tee shot, and smashed it out of the park to tie the game.

Waugh sat open-mouthed. When finally he could speak, he delivered an unforgettable tribute. “That is the best clutch play I have ever seen!”

It didn’t matter that Australia ultimately lost the match, ironically because one of those infield fly-balls had so much spin on it that it wilfully teased the fielder before ducking out of her reach. But it didn’t spoil my memories. One pitch. Victory or defeat. And that young woman squared her shoulders, stared it down, and hit it straight over the centrefield fence.

That’s why I love the Olympic Games.

Now you can find your own reasons …