August 29, 2004 | The Summer Games belong here, in the Olympic cradle, and just one pilgrimage to Ancient Olympia would tell you that. Zeus doesn't play Paris or Moscow, London or Times Square. This is the gods' homecourt. It shouldn't go abandoned for the next 108 years.
August 28, 2004 | They live below the rim, where the pay is commensurate with that of your average middle manager, so American women get their revenge at the Olympics, the one sports stage where it pays to be a vertically-challenged woman rather than a rim-rocking man.
August 27, 2004 | Allen Iverson sounded like the ultimate winner in Olympic defeat, smarter and more noble than his old friend, Larry Brown, had sounded across three sorry weeks of basketball.
August 26, 2004 | Larry Brown did what Larry Brown always does when trapped in a corner like a guard who stopped his dribble too soon: He lied. Larry the Liar claimed that the humiliating timeout he called at the end of this victory over Spain was a simple misunderstanding.
August 25, 2004 | With a half-moon rising behind him, and an orange sun plunging beneath the Saronic Gulf before him, Gal Fridman stood where no Israeli man or woman had ever set foot -- on top of an Olympic platform.
August 24, 2004 | Demons? You want demons? Take all of Phil Mickelson's Major-free years, multiply them by John Elway's ring-free years, and add in Dan Jansen's gold-free Olympics for good measure, and you have an approximate measure of the burdens weighing down Hicham El Guerrouj as he headed for home Tuesday night, chased by a Kenyan and a much faster ghost.
August 23, 2004 | It is about them, Mike Candrea forever said. The kids, the players, the young women in his life who pitched, hit and fielded a softball like no team ever had.
August 23, 2004 | The Slingers were fans of the Olympic Games who now run from them as fast as they can to avoid being reminded that Tammy Crow, American Olympian, is going for the gold eight months after being convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of her boyfriend, Cody Tatro, and the Slingers' 12-year-old son, Brett.
August 22, 2004 | One harmless gesture separates him from lionization in America and canonization in South Korea, and yet Paul Hamm is lost in a gymnast's cloud of chalk dust, leaving him too blinded to see the light.
August 22, 2004 | You don't pull body parts from the ruins of the World Trade Center, hop into your bow seat less than three years later, and simply dump the memories and haunts in a pile of sweat clothes on an Olympic Games dock. “How can you let that go?” Jason Read asked.
August 21, 2004 | Paul Hamm might deserve a Wheaties box and a million-dollar endorsement deal, but he doesn't deserve sole ownership of the all-around gymnastics medal. That is something he most definitely needs to share.
August 19, 2004 | She did not have the magnetic power of Mary Lou Retton, or the dizzy charm of Sarah Hughes, but Carly Patterson did have one final dance in front of her, one last chance to prove that her face belonged on those 70 million McDonald's bags and cups after all.
August 18, 2004 | Nothing essential changed over the 2,780 years that separated the first Olympic Games and the shot put competition that Adam Nelson lost Wednesday on the same narrow, 200-meter dirt field where naked Greek men once covered themselves with olive oil and made sport of ripping out each other's small intestines and throats.
August 17, 2004 | Larry Brown would’ve made this team better by asking for an NBA shooter rather than a UConn post man, but this is no time to be crying over the process, anyway -- despite all the no-shows, Brown was given the best player in the world (Tim Duncan), and the best athletes in the field.
August 17, 2004 | In Athens, a teeming street festival of culture and sport, of peace and understanding, has given way to an eerie wasteland devoid of people and noise.
August 16, 2004 | One day after nearly the entire women’s team attended the absurd loss to Puerto Rico, and one day before the host Greeks would play the United States and threaten to deny it a place in the medal round, no male team member — player or coach — adjusted his practice or social schedule to watch the one American team here that plays basketball the way Red Holzman drew it up.
August 15, 2004 | Michael Phelps swam the second leg of the 400-meter relay last night, and yet his hopes of breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in one Olympics was already shattered before his head hit the water.
August 15, 2004 | Michael Phelps swam the second leg of the 400-meter relay last night, and yet his hopes of breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in one Olympics was already shattered before his head hit the water.
August 14, 2004 | Under the caldron Sunday, this was a burning issue among many Greeks walking to and from events: Under any circumstances, would American officials have kicked out their biggest star - a Michelle Kwan, for instance - on the first day of the Salt Lake Games?
August 14, 2004 | Swimming people said Michael Phelps had the talent to break Mark Spitz' record of seven gold medals in a single Summer Games, but this much was clear: Phelps wasn't going to break that record if he gagged in an event he dominates, the 400 IM - so he didn't gag.
August 13, 2004 | Larry Brown spent his entire NBA life searching for the ultimate victory lap, and what did that destruction of the Laker dynasty get him, other than an Olympic burden heavier than the one Michael Phelps will take head-first into the pool?
August 12, 2004 | It was 10:23 p.m. when unmitigated joy was found a long way from Baghdad, bloody Baghdad, when the final whistle blew and the young men from Iraq could do so much more than sing and dance, the greatest gift of a forever Olympic soccer match.
Ian O'Connor
