Brazil's great volleyball player, Gilberto Godoy Filho-- "Giba" -- with his Fu Manchu mustache and pirate captain's spirit, leaping with blazing eyes over a table and running high into the stands to embrace and kiss a friend after Brazil defeated Italy to win the gold.

High-jump champion Yelena Slesarenko gleefully, disbelievingly skipping up onto the top rung of the medal podium, her face lit up from within, like a little girl who wakes up early on Christmas morning and remembers what day it is.

The unknown Swiss mountain bike racer sobbing uncontrollably by the side of the road, heedless of passing spectators, his face buried in his hands, being comforted by a woman.

The four Americans in the 400-meter relay as they successively came around the turn 15 yards away, flashing images of power and grace and utter purposefulness, their faces seen in the binoculars stripped of everything inessential, as beautiful and blank as Cycladic statues.

Yelena Isinbayeva, her mouth open in ecstasy as she dropped down over the pole vault bar, having gambled everything and won everything.

The frenzied face of Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang as he half-flew, half-stumbled across the line in the 110 meters, tying the world record and announcing a new era in world athletics.

The great from-the-gut roar of national pride that echoed through Olympic Stadium as Greek triple jumper Hrysopiyi Devetzi landed in the pit and leaped up, clenching her fists, with the longest jump of her career. And the three marvelously different types of joy visible on the medal platform later, with Russian winner Tatyana Lebedeva as tender as a lover, Devetzi ebullient and energized, Cameroonian Francoise Mbango Etone as gracious as a goddess. Any Paris with half a brain would give the golden apple to all of them.

Ezekiel Kemboi, leading his two Kenyan countrymen in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, half-turning and making a "Come on" gesture to them as they came out of the water jump, making sure that his brothers in black, red and green would join him on the victory stand.

Spain's pole-vaulter Dana Cervantes, in one of those countless unnoticed moments of Olympic courage, trying to jump with an injured back, grimacing in pain, failing on her final attempt and then weeping bitterly, forgotten in a corner as other competitors, still alive, moved blithely around her.

Morocco's Hicham El-Guerrouj, the world-record holder in the 1,500 meters, falling to the track and kissing it after holding off Kenya's Bernard Lagat to finally win the Olympic gold he had been denied twice.

American guard Dawn Staley, vaunting like Muhammad Ali, drinking in the moment and talking the talk after her fiery play had inspired a torpid U.S. team to rally for the gold medal in basketball against Australia.

The tears that unexpectedly welled up in my eyes as the American women's soccer team took the field against Brazil and I suddenly found myself watching not grown women, some of them with their own children, but transparent ghosts through which I watched my own 7-year-old daughter and her friends, awkward in their little shorts, chasing the ball that Hamm and Fawcett and Chastain and Lilly and Foudy had kicked far ahead for them to chase, and catch, and kick ahead again.

These are some of the moments that the Olympic odyssey is about. The joy of victory and the pain of defeat will never be forgotten, but something else endures, as a consolation to victor and vanquished alike: the memory of striving, of human endeavor. That memory does not change; it is impervious to time and its losses.

John Keats, dying of tuberculosis at age 26, sought comfort in an ancient Greek urn. "Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave / Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; / Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal -- yet, do not grieve; / She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss / Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

For me, and for all of the athletes at these magnificent Athens Games, whether they came in first or last, and all of the rest of humanity who watched their deeds, the beauty of the human spirit shown in the Olympics is its truth: That is all we know on Earth, and all we need to know.

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