My Olympic rankings: Sydney No. 2

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BEIJING -- Many of my colleagues believe that Sydney in 2000 was the ultimate Summer Games experience. It’s difficult to argue with them. Perfect organization. Perfect venues. Perfect conditions. Perfect hospitality. Nice, inexpensive Shiraz wines.

So why is Sydney second among the eight Summer Olympics I covered before this one?

This was not the fault of the organizing committee, or certainly not of the Australian people, but I can’t put behind me the fraud committed by Marion Jones.

I knew Marion from the days she was in high school in Thousand Oaks and liked her. Unlike some of my more cynical friends among Olympic writers, I defended her against drug accusations, despite some of the questionable people she surrounded herself with, such as her coach, Trevor Graham, and her husband at the time, shot putter C.J. Hunter.

Even when Hunter had to explain his drug debacle -- four positive tests in one summer! -- in a Sydney news conference with Jones sitting next to him, supporting him, I sort of believed her. I wanted to. I had seen some sprinters come from nowhere and put up times that in no way seemed plausible, but Jones, from the time she was in high school, had made what seemed to be a natural progression.

I feel foolish.

But there were some great athletic accomplishments in Sydney. My favorite was Rulon Gardner’s upset of Alexander Karelin in super-heavyweight wrestling. The Russian’s record before that championship match in Olympics and world championship competition was 59-0.

Cathy Freeman, the final torchbearer and the symbol for what everyone hoped would be improving conditions for Australian Aborigines, won the 400.

Lithuania almost upset the Dream Team in a semifinal basketball game. It would have been the U.S. men’s first loss since allowing NBA players to participate. Instead, that would come four years later, in Greece.

I asked Donnie Nelson, the son of Don Nelson and an assistant coach for Lithuania, if he felt his players had been intimidated by the U.S. team.

‘Some of these kids have seen Russian tanks rolling down the streets of Vilnius toward them,’’ he said. ‘They don’t get very intimidated by basketball players.’’

Next: Barcelona, 1992

-- Randy Harvey

Harvey’s previous Olympic ratings:

Los Angeles, Moscow, Athens, Seoul, Montreal, Atlanta