Yes, it does and when you wash away the stains of such blights as performance drugs and bribing of officials, it's a powerful institution. Its reputation besmirched, its very existence called into question, it always seems to stand up and shine through. It isn't the Games that drew them together. Economics played a greater role.
People are more alike than they are different and every Olympic march-in underlines it.
Counting the Winter Olympics, every couple of years the world gets a chance to pause and party. As expected, the Australians kicked off their first Olympics in 44 years with a boffo show that still echoes through the streets. The theme turned brushfire, then giant flowers emerging from the scorched earth and high into the air. It moved through Aboriginal history, to pioneering times, to the modern era. Ever since the flame was lit via arrow at Barcelona eight years ago, slam-bang finales are in vogue.