We’re only a couple days away from the opening ceremonies of the 2008 summer Olympics. When the eyes of the world will be on Beijing. If those eyes get a little watery and puffy, it's because someone decided to bring the world's finest tuned human specimens to one of the most polluted places on the planet.

The city is making some adjustments to accommodate the international gathering, however: they shut down manufacturing for months prior to the opening, they’re planting 30,000 trees to add a little oxygen and you can get an air mask to match the color of your native country's flag.

I’ve got to think that someone actually thought this through, so maybe this is a new component they’ve decided to add to the competition. Anyone can run in the pristine air of northern Utah! Try running through a plastics factory and see if you cut the mustard. How 'bout building the track oval around a steel factory or putting the basketball gym above the cooling ponds of a leaky reactor? I’ve never been a big fan of the Olympics, but I’d watch the 100-meter free style in the Yangtze just to see if the river eats the suits and goggles right off 'em.

Maybe these modern day Olympiads are better suited to adaptation. These are not the athletes of old that trained in their spare time in local gyms or the side streets of their hometowns. These are almost freakish creatures that had a stop watch clocking their delivery time from womb through the birth canal (2.47 seconds is the world record…though this was tainted recently upon a recent discovery that the mother downed a handful of Mentos with a Coke chaser just prior to the event).

By the time they compete in the Olympics, they’re chiseled and honed machines capable of performing at incredibly high levels regardless of their environ. It's amazing to watch the super-slow-mo replays of these men and women, muscles rippling, veins fit to bust, eyes bugging out… why, its almost as if they’ve been genetically altered. I don’t think they need to waste all the money doing blood and urine tests on these athletes anymore...just do a quick check for tails.

Personally, I think if these people want to turn their skin into human test tubes it may be a bad choice, but it should be their choice. Instead of the cost and effort to monitor banned substances, they should just make everything legal and let the freak show begin. “Look at the set of gills on that Russian Bob!!”… ”You think that’s something Al, in our broadcast last night her countryman, boxer Yurnose Brokennoff, actually put his fist right through his opponent and the other fellow lasted another round and half!!”… “Who says those French are quitters Bob?!”.

And whether or not these are the athletes of old, these are certainly not the Olympics of old. In 1982 the reason it was the “Miracle on Ice” was not so much because we didn’t have skates or ice or guys with sticks, it was because the Russians trained year round for this event and the American team was kind of a rag-tag group of young athletes that made the best of their talents in a short period of time and overcame superior ability with a team concept and a more determined effort.

Now all the athletes train year-round, and it seems that the glory and honor of representing your country and flag has been overshadowed by the potential for mega-dollars in future endorsements and personal appearances. Japanese athletes train in Canada so they can compete for America and so become sport mercenaries that go wherever they have the best chance to win and by winning maximize their financial possibilities (let's call this “The Steinbrenner Effect”).

As much as they may have resisted, the Olympics have become as commercial and hyperbolic as every other major athletic event. There are rafts of “Official” products and concepts that seem to have little or nothing to do with sports or athletes or the Olympics. Athletes and teams endorse products that they’ll never use, that are made in places they’ve never been, by people who can’t afford to buy them.

I think that Dane101 should send me (and my family would be nice) to Beijing as “The Official Undertalented Cynical Smalltown Reporter of the 2008 Olympics”. I can see it now, me at the opening ceremonies, uncertain why there are tears streaming down my face as they bring the Olympic torch over the bodies of the last of the protesters and into the stadium. A 7'3" Chinese ping-pong player takes it the last lap of its journey to the top of the stadium and, as he lights the Olympic flame, the whole sky starts on fire.

They should've closed those paint factories a couple months sooner.