The Australian missed out on the 57kg women’s bronze last Monday when she lost to Brazil’s Ketleyn Quadros. I can now tell you Pekli competed for Hungary in 1992 and 96 before migrating to Australia and, at 36, she’s probably had her last Games.

That’s what I like about the Olympics. Someone you never heard of, doing something you don’t care about, and suddenly, for a few minutes, you’re a judo fan. Sparkling little moments, once every four years – just what the Games are all about, right?

Okay, maybe not.

Stephanie Rice’s golden swims have been replayed three thousand times (it will have doubled as you read this). Michael Phelps is so good that NBC paid China to reschedule swim finals for American primetime audiences. The USA basketball ‘Redeem Team’ is worth more than some eastern European economies. If these glossy, sports drink label-perfect stars weren’t on show, not many of us would huddle round TVs demanding our quadrennial fix of fencing.

Then there’s the argument the Games are about Us (rich countries) rubbing our dominance in the faces of Them (poor countries). Before Abhinav Bindra took out last Monday’s 10 metre air rifle shooting, India had never won an individual gold medal.

The eight they’d won previously were in hockey, between 1928 and 1980. Their hockey team didn’t make it this time round, and a nation of 1.1 billion people sent 57 athletes to the Games right on their doorstep. Australia sent 433. You can understand why, to a lot of people, the Olympics aren’t about friendly competition. They’re about rich Western parents showing off institute-trained, nutritionally-nurtured prodigies. Why should they tune in to hear The Star-Spangled Banner, or that song our swimmers made about being “born heroes”?

Still, there’s a feel to the Games no newspaper or lens quite captures. Getting off the bus at Homebush with the cauldron shimmering over the hills made them suddenly the Olympics, not the TV’s. The cauldron burns everything brighter; the sky, the cheering, even the silence.