Former Olympian Wilf Wedman, now retired from his position as director of recreation and athletics at Simon Fraser University, views the Beijing Games as a opportunity for the West to learn more about China and revise our way of thinking, just as his changed 40 years ago in Mexico. Says Wedman, the Games "capture the imagination of a young person, extract commitment and sacrifice, and focus one's life for many, many years. They draw forth one's best, teach one about oneself and help one define one's meaning."

Canadian athletes Debbie Brill (left) and Brenda Eisler shopped in Munich on Aug. 28, 1972. The Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes occurred Sept. 5, deflating Brill and other Olympians.

Brill recovered to compete in her event just two days later, finishing eighth.

As the world gears up for the Games of the 29th Olympiad, running Aug. 8 to 24 in Beijing, we brace for anticipated and unforeseeable controversy. The Tibet issue, drugs, human-rights violations, protests, pollution, terrorism - Beijing could have it all.

But as many boomers will recall, what would an Olympics be without controversy? The performances of star athletes will be under clouds of suspicion - been there. Boycotts were discussed to protest the heavy-handed treatment of Tibetans earlier this year - done it.

The post-Ben Johnson era - 1988 and on - is relatively fresh in the minds of young and older. Let's go back a bit earlier. "Turbulent" would be the word I'd chose to characterize the five Summer Olympics that took place from 1968 to 1984, reflecting events in the world, the activism of the sixties, the cold war and social inequalities.

My reference point for this, and I'm sure for many readers, is the Montreal Olympics in the summer of 1976. I was there. These Olympics failed the fiscal responsibility test. (Some men apparently do have babies.) As well, the host Canadian athletes fell short of the media's typically inflated expectations. But I'll remember it for many fine performances, particularly in the track and field events that were of most interest to me.

There were politics, of course. A boycott of the event by African countries deprived the Games of many fine performers.

The Organization of African Unity had called for the boycott if New Zealand was allowed to participate. Kiwi rugby players had earlier competed in apartheid-dominated South Africa.

The International Olympic Committee refused to budge, not surprising given that rugby was not an Olympic sport.

One highlight of many was the men's 10,000 metres, captured by Lasse Viren as the Finn won his third of four Olympic golds. Ethiopia's Miruts Yifter (10,000 metres), metric miler Filbert Bayi of Tanzania and Kenya's Mike Boit (800 metres) and others would have ensured quite different results, particularly in the running events. How must these athletes have felt?

Toronto's John Craig knows. Today Craig is a director of the Ontario Track and Field Association. The five-time national champion in middle distances made the Olympic team in 1980 but he and 210 other Canadian athletes were unable to compete when western countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Shortly after Christmas 1979, 1500-metre-runner Craig, his twin brother Paul and their families headed to San Diego. Typical of committed Canadian athletes of the day, they planned to take advantage of weather and facilities to train "as long as their money held out." The scene suggests a certain pureness - long days of training with supportive family members nearby - but the messy boycott, not supported by everyone, ruins the picture.

Having attended university in Texas, John Craig was more sympathetic than some to the Jimmy Carter-led boycott movement. The situation in Afghanistan was "terrible," he recalled in a recent phone conversation.

"If it was part of some significant diplomatic initiative, a boycott was the right thing to do," Craig says. "But no one did anything."

In fact, Canada set a record for wheat sales to the Soviet Union in 1980.

Craig competed in the 1981 World Cup before moving into track administration with the OTFA. His brother competed in another star-crossed Olympics, four years later.

The Los Angeles event in 1984 saw reprisals from most of the Eastern Bloc countries, who "declined invitations" to L.A.

Canadians ran wild with a record medal haul - but what did it mean with so many elite athletes absent?

Although athletes from 17 countries were absent, the Games made money. That brings us to another controversial theme: commercialization. Should the Games be turning a profit?

Back to "my" Olympics in '76. A look at faded photos brings back memories of the sterile Olympic Stadium devoid of corporate advertising. The public announcements were brief and not intended to boost patriotism. No rock music blasting through the speakers either. The events stood on their own.

But TV has changed things. Revenues became increasingly important to sponsoring cities. American television payments for broadcasting rights - $25-million in Montreal - have escalated to $894-million at Beijing.

Nearly half of that goes to the IOC who, in the mid-nineties, became more aggressive in marketing endeavours.

Should we be concerned with this commercialization? Have we lost faith with Baron Pierre de Coubertin's modern Games' founding vision?

The Olympic Creed was inspired by an address at the 1908 Games by Bishop Ethelbert Talbot: "The important thing in these Olympics is not so much winning as taking part."

From my vantage point the creed would leave no room for boycotts and would infer that commercialization ought to be aimed at enhancing the "taking part" aspect of the games.

The Montreal games featured a security presence that at the time seemed off-putting but by today's standards would be considered laughable.

For most of us, the memories of the Munich Massacre at the previous Olympics, on Sept. 5, 1972 - nine dead Israeli athletes - were still fresh in our minds.

High jumper Debbie Brill was in the Olympic Village on that fateful day. Her immediate response was that she didn't want to compete; the games should be cancelled. She recalled in her 1986 biography Jump:

"The original idea of a bunch of athletes from around the world gathering together to celebrate their youth and their talent and their spirit seemed to have been utterly lost. I saw the Olympics as a great wheel churning relentlessly. Horrible things could happen, but the wheel would keep turning."

The Olympics did roll on. Brill finished eighth in her event.

Four years earlier, the Black Power salutes of John Carlos and Tommie Smith from the 200-metre champions podium in Mexico City pushed more significant developments, specifically rioting and student deaths, off the front pages.

Like the Afro-American athletes, Mexican students were taking advantage of the forum the Olympics afforded. The death toll is still not known (250 would be a conservative figure) and responsibility has never been determined. Luis Echeverria, the former president of Mexico, was accused 37 years later of ordering the bloodbath but initial court proceedings against him were withdrawn.

Wilf Wedman, who competed in the high jump in Mexico, was a second-year student at Simon Fraser University in 1968.

The future SFU Rhodes scholar later embarked on a long career coaching and in track and university administration. He recalls that the public impression of the riots at the time is that they were "a minor thing," that it was a "spontaneous" occurrence. But early on that day, Oct. 2, there had been military vehicles and personnel "at every corner."

Athletes in the Olympic Village had been advised not to go downtown.

Wedman had, by his own description, a naive North American approach but was awakened to political realties in 1968. The Games' future was uncertain then and has seemed doomed many times since. But as Wedman discussed over 45 minutes on the phone, the strife he witnessed in Mexico City, that helped transform him as a human being, did not sour him on the Games. On the contrary, he now believes the Games will survive for a long time and commends the Olympic movement's "indestructible spirit."

Today he looks forward to the Beijing Games. And so do I. Let the Games begin.

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Sources for this article include the book by Alfred Erich Senn, Power Politics and the Olympic Games, Human Kinetics, 1999.