Games great but do not change world

To get ready for the Olympics, which start tonight in Beijing, I picked up a copy of the new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Marannis, "Rome 1960, The Olympics That Changed the World."

As with most everything else associated with the Olympics, it turned out to be an exaggeration.

A better title would be "Rome 1960, The Olympics That Occurred When the World Was Changing."

Ever since their modern reintroduction in 1896 — if we can still call that modern — and no doubt in the ancient Games as well, the Olympics have been given way too much credit and way too much blame.

There is no empirical evidence that they start wars or stop wars, or start peace or stop peace, either. They do not crown kings nor elect presidents — although Mitt Romney did give it a nice try — and as the current version in China further attests, they do not significantly alter human rights one way or the other.

What they are is a great track meet.

But that doesn't stop poets and philosophers from trying to elevate the myths that the Olympics significantly effect cultural and societal change. And I can hardly blame them; heaven knows I've been guilty of it from time to time myself.

To be fair, Marannis — a fine writer who authored the biography of Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," one of the most enjoyable biographies I've ever read — doesn't come right out and say the Rome Games changed the world (the publisher probably wrote the title). But he does underlay the foot races and boxing matches with a strong undertow of political espionage and social unrest that is best viewed almost 50 years later so no one can scoff too much.

It's true, 1960 was a pivotal time in American and world history, ushering in civil rights from Birmingham to Johannesburg, shining a new light on feminism, dropping the temperature on the Cold War, and bringing technology in all its many facets like never before.

As Marannis details, the Rome Games were the first to be commercially broadcast (by CBS), the first to have a doping scandal (when a Danish cyclist died after allegedly ingesting blood medication), the first to involve more than a dozen new African nations barely released from European colonialism, the first to elevate the U.S.-USSR rivalry into something that went slightly beyond life-and-death, the first to let women run the amazingly taxing distance of, gasp, 800 meters; and it was Rome that crowned three iconic African-American gold medalists for the ages: sprinter Wilma Rudolph, decathlete Rafer Johnson and an 18-year-old boxer from Louisville named Cassius Clay.

In the ensuing years, Rome's reputation has expanded right along with Muhammad Ali's.

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