Last updated 19:47, Thursday, 14 August 2008

I ASKED for time off work last Friday claiming that I had to go and watch the opening of the Olympics for this column.

I didn't really need to watch. I already had the column planned. I was going to talk about how hypocritical the games were now. I was going to talk about the evil of holding them in a country where human rights count for nothing and I was going to talk about drug abuse and politics and how the games no longer mean anything they were meant to mean.

And I was probably right in a lot of ways. As the 204 participating countries marched past, my husband asked how many of them were democracies. North and South Korea had refused to march together. The commentators pointed out athletes who had signed their names to a letter to the Chinese government calling for a review of their human rights policy. The American contingent was led by a Sudanese refugee -a poke at China's participation in the Darfur war.

There were so many countries I had never heard of, mainly because political upheaval has led to name changes. There were countries marching proudly behind flags that have been symbols of shame. There was the flag of Zimbabwe reminding us of the loss of democracy and the atrocities of Mugabe's regime. There was the flag of Burma, a country devastated by natural causes this year and devastated more by a closed government's initial refusal to accept help from the outside world.

At the very minute that Vladimir Putin stood cheering on his Russian team, Russian tanks were moving in on southern Georgia.

Every evidence of everything I thought was wrong about the games was there.

But, as over 2,000 drummers began a spectacular countdown to the opening ceremony, I felt a bubble of excitement.

When the fireworks began, I felt a shiver of excitement and, no matter that the history of China was presented in whitewash, I found myself thrilling to the spectacle of the opening.

Then the athletes came in and I realised that what I was going to write was wrong.

The athletes, from large, wealthy democracies, from war-torn continents and devastated, persecuted countries, from vast nations to tiny islands, walked and danced and skipped into the stadium. And they were all smiling and they all looked excited and all they wanted to do was to take part in what remains the greatest sports festival in the world.

Standing next to a seven feet tall Chinese basketball player who carried China's flag was one true hero -a nine-year-old boy who had sung and encouraged classmates when they were buried in the recent earthquake - and he, too, looked proud to be there.

Without the gift of foresight, I am unable to tell you what will have happened between the Friday I wrote this and the Friday it is published.

It is possible that there will have been a drug scandal. It is possible that war has erupted in one of the other countries taking part in the Olympics, more people will have been killed in Georgia and more protestors might have been expelled from China by a hard-line government.

The Olympics probably will not change the world. They never have before. But for one glorious fortnight, every four years, they allow us something we might not otherwise have. They allow us a moment of hope.

Athletes live in a village together, they eat together and they compete together. And, by the end of the games, we will see them breaking rank. They will no longer be marching behind their own flags but will be joyously greeting their new friends from other nations.

And maybe one day, somehow, something will grow from those friendships.

We can hang onto a dream because sometimes dreams are all we have.