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I am certain that most of the arguments supporting a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympiad in Beijing center around human-rights violations and gross environmental degradation and insular socialist politics committed unashamedly by the Chinese government. The legacy of Chairman Mao has indeed ballooned to become - by default - the emerging dragon on the geopolitical horizon; with over a billion strong and growing, an economy growing four times faster than ours, and a renewed swagger, China has erupted to become a new axis of international governance. Coupled with its implicit and explicit support of rogue states throughout the world, the Chinese government is butting heads with the United States at the United Nations and through the presses. China has become a bull, charging faster and faster toward the American era of hegemony with a singular determination to KNOCK THAT TOREADOR ON HIS...

But this is neither here nor there. The Olympics, as I have written previously in another piece about the Olympic mountain-bike test race in September (http://www.helium.com/tm/6467 64/september-staged-olympic-pr eview), should stand as an ideal of clean physical accomplishment, unadorned by prejudice or politics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), controlling interests and curators of the tradition, selected Beijing as a candidate city after an infrastructure evaluation on 28 August 2000 alongside Osaka, Paris, Toronto and Istanbul. Following a further on-site inspection of each candidate by the IOC Evaluation Commission, Beijing was voted as the host of the 29th Summer Olympiad at the 112th IOC Session in Moscow on 13 July 2001. Defeating runner-up Toronto by a vote of over two to one on each of the two rounds of voting, Beijing has been preparing and improving itself in anticipation of showcasing itself to the world throughout August 2008.

The Olympics bring out the best of everyone who is involved. Beijing is fighting against the clock to have itself ready in time for the big party. At that recent race, the most alarming problem had nothing to do with the fast and well-plotted course or the security detail or any other of the infrastructure details. Rather, two-thirds of all participants - a composite of both the men's and women's races - at the test race were forced to pull out because of the hot, muggy, particle-laden air. Pollution prevented them reaching their peak performance. This was the time of the season where the riders should have sparkled most. This

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