A memorable Olympics

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

From a purely athletic perspective it has to be said the Beijing Olympics, which concluded Sunday, were a smashing success, particularly for fans of swimming and track and field. Numerous world and Olympic marks were set in the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest. The performance of American swimmer Michael Phelps, the first Olympian ever to win eight gold medals in a single meet, will go down as one of the greatest individual athletic feats ever achieved.

Although host China won the most gold medals, Americans won the most medals overall with 110, a superlative achievement that did our nation proud. Special applause goes to the men’s and women’s basketball and 1,600-meter relay teams, the women’s soccer squad and the men’s volleyball team, all of which took home gold. Other golden stars of note were gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, decathlete Bryan Clay, beach volleyball duet Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, swimmer Natalie Coughlin and basketball star Lisa Leslie, who hauled in gold for the fourth consecutive Summer Games.

There were disappointments, too. The men’s and women’s 400-meter relay teams both failed to reach the finals because of dropped batons, and the women’s softball team was shocked by Japan in the gold medal game. American men came home with only a single bronze medal in boxing, a poor showing in a sport we once dominated.

Tragedy came in the form of the Aug. 9 stabbing death of American Todd Bachman, father-in-law of men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. And although the Olympic venues were spectacular in architectural design, they could not cover up the fact that China is still run by a communist regime that pays lip service to free speech and has a deplorable record on human rights.

Under the radar of Olympic coverage was the fact that eight Americans, along with a Briton and a German, were jailed by Chinese authorities for conducting “unauthorized” pro-Tibet demonstrations. The Americans were released the day the Olympics ended.

The International Olympic Committee, which runs the games, seems to have done a better job of cracking down on athletes who take illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Barring embarrassing disclosures, the world records in Beijing should hold up.

But the committee needs to settle the controversy involving allegations that some Chinese female gymnasts who took home team gold were underage. It needs to review the confusing scoring system in boxing, and it should rethink its decision to drop women’s softball from the Olympic schedule. After all, the games are meant for both men and women, and dropping softball is a step in the wrong direction.