He'd come, without fanfare and without entourage, to witness a preliminary round bout featuring a black South African flyweight – the first athlete of colour to represent that country in the Olympics after decades as an apartheid pariah.
It was Nelson Mandela, fight fan and one-time amateur boxer, up there, enjoying the moment, even though his boy was trounced.
We talked sports for half an hour – before the media horde descended – because he refused to discuss politics.
Mandela is the only dignitary I can recall whose presence at any Olympic Games added sparkle to the spectacle. And that includes the entire Windsor clan, in Montreal in 1976, watching Princess Anne compete for Great Britain as an equestrienne. Nice photo, but who really gives a toss?
The Games are about the athletes, which is what makes them enduringly appealing. Many of these participants receive scant attention in what are often obscure disciplines, but for the quadrennial event.
So, it matters not one iota whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper chooses – or opts not, as he's indicated – to grace Beijing with his presence come August. The symbolism of bowing out has political legs only with an anal Ottawa press gallery and a harpy opposition.
Chinese officials might be displeased but it is a practical, if tyrannical, regime and bilateral relations are unlikely to be affected. The world needs China, with its lending dollars and vast trade market, and China knows this. Just as it knew that political protests would climax as the Games approached.
The International Olympic Committee knew this too, when it awarded Beijing the Games, although it was probably not prepared for the international combustion provoked by the regime's ham-fisted response to dissent in Tibet.
There were compelling reasons to pick Beijing over Toronto: The Games have never been to China before, a nation of 1.3 billion people. I was in Beijing the day the announcement came and the rejoicing in the streets was a wonder to behold. These were ordinary Chinese citizens with, I dare say, more of an axe to grind with their totalitarian government than human rights activists half a planet away.
Further, as sane observers will acknowledge, engaging China multilaterally is more useful long-term than continued isolation. Anything can happen behind a drawn curtain. This is as transparent as China has ever been – for all the websites unplugged, journalists booted and activists imprisoned.
Barring a tragedy of unprecedented proportions, there will be no international boycott of the Beijing Games. The U.S.-led boycott of Moscow in 1980, over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, achieved nothing – except to deprive hundreds of athletes of their only Olympic experience. And Canada was sorely aggrieved when, four years earlier, 22 black African nations stayed away from Montreal over the inclusion of New Zealand, because their rugby squad (a non-Olympic sport) had toured in South Africa.
The Olympic torch relay – on a 21-stop, 136,000-kilometre odyssey – is now drawing all manner of violent protest by both those with their heart in the right place and those who just want to rumble. It has become a magnet for tumult.
Sad to say, but this might be a good time for the IOC to can the tradition.
You know, Adolf Hitler dreamed up the whole flame relay thing, for the 1936 Berlin Games. Since then it has become a sponsorship monstrosity, funded by multinational corporations covetous of Olympic branding.
Except for that last lap in the stadium, and the lighting of the cauldron, the torch relay has no particular resonance.
Snuff it.
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