Odd as it may sound, Olympic competition once included art, and medalists included musicians, painters, and poets. One was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the 1912 Stockholm Games' gold medalist in poetry and — by sheer coincidence, surely — also the modern games' founder.

"O sport," the nobleman's winning "Ode to Sport" waxed, "you are beauty," and "audacity," and the "pleasure of the gods."

A century on, the Olympics still embody beauty, but the audacity they now conjure is not what Coubertin had in mind, but a celebration of cheating and a saga of lost innocence — financially, athletically, and politically.

War by other means

Political innocence was lost already by Coubertin himself, who insisted after the 1936 Berlin Games that Adolf Hitler, rather than hijack his vision, had "magnificently served the Olympic ideal."

Still, the Olympic ideal seemed salvaged when five postwar Olympiads offered the spirit of fraternity the games were meant to inspire, especially when former Axis spearheads Rome and Tokyo hosted the games peacefully and happily.

Also read: Forget the Opening Ceremonies — the Olympics start today

In 1968 this era of good feeling came to an end.

What began with Mexican police firing into marching students, and killing at least 25, lest they disturb the approaching Mexico City Games, was followed in 1972 by the massacre in Munich of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian gunmen, and then by three boycotts: Montreal's by African nations, Moscow's by much of the West, and Los Angeles's by the former East Bloc.

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The Greek tradition, of halting all wars while the athletes competed, had thus been turned on its head, as the games became war's continuation by other means.

Following the Cold War, the Games resurfaced as an instrument of authoritarian assertion, first in Beijing, then in Sochi. Meanwhile, the Games also lost their athletic purity.

The original ideal of amateurism was buried in 1992 when the U.S. was allowed to deploy NBA stars, consequently fielding the Dream Team of multimillionaires Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson.