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On the list of those who have made the Olympics what they are, a French toff with an eye for history and a head full of lofty sporting philosophies sits at the top.
Pierre de Fredy is singularly responsible for every wondrous feat of athletic performance that each of the 28 Modern Olympic Games has produced.
M. de Fredy, who later became Baron Pierre de Coubertin, provided the inspiration and the energy to revive the Olympics after the Games had been extinct for 1,500 years.
De Coubertin saw his reincarnation of the ancient Greek games as a “four-yearly festival of the springtime of mankind” and hoped competitors would “adhere to an ideal of a higher life”.
His principles haven’t always been maintained, but the Games rarely fail to provide glimpses of what he had in mind.
The first of them came four days into the first Modern Olympic Games in 1896 when a Greek shepherd set off from the village of Marathon and three hours later arrived at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
Spiridon Louis had recreated a 2,000 year-old Greek legend to win the first Olympic marathon, providing a perfect foundation for an event that has captivated, astounded, entertained and occasionally dismayed the world ever since.
Athletes have burst from the blocks and into heroic imagination at every one of the modern Games.
Over the past 112 years, the little Greek shepherd has been joined in Olympic mythology by sportspeople from more than a hundred nations and from every continent.
In many cases, the magical moments they provided have been obvious.
People like Jacobus Franciscus “Jim” Thorpe, a native American who won the pentathlon and decathlon and made the finals of the high jump and long jump at the Stockholm Games of 1912.
Thorpe may well have been the greatest athlete of the 20th century, but his encounter with King Gustav of Sweden at the presentation ceremony had its own magic.
“You sir, are the greatest athlete in the world,” declared Gustav.
“Thanks, King,” said Thorpe.
For a sense of occasion, justice and as a tribute to de Coubertin’s aspiration to ideals, another American, Jesse Owens is momentous.
Owens ran against an ideology when he competed at the Berlin Games of 1936.
And he beat it hands down.
At a Games meant to showcase Aryan dominance, Owens, a black American, won the 100m, 200m and long jump, delivering to the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler a wonderful, if futile, affront.
The trouble with so many moments in time is that they aren’t always apparent until they have passed.
France’s Micheline Ostermeyer may well have provided a couple of those in London in 1948 when she won the shot put and discus.
Her feats took on a new resonance when it subsequently emerged that she was also a celebrated concert pianist.
No such mystery surrounded Emil Zatopek in Helsinki four years later.
The Czech won the 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon in the style of a comedian, raconteur and the greatest distance runner of the 20th century.
But from an Australian point of view, his Olympic “moment” came 16 years later when he was visited in Prague by Australian runner Ron Clarke who had just failed in the last of his many attempts to win a gold medal.
Clarke later wrote that as Zatopek escorted him to his plane he secretly transferred a small package into the Australian’s hand, telling him, at the same time, that he deserved it.
When Clarke opened it on the plane, he found it contained Zatopek’s 10,000m gold medal from the 1952 Games.
Zatopek’s gesture is one of those subtle but significant Olympic events that did not take place in any kind of competition, but which embody what de Coubertin imagined.
Another occurred in 1964 at the opening ceremony in Tokyo when the final torchbearer Yoshinori Sakai stepped up to light the Olympic cauldron.
The 19-year-old wasn’t an athlete, nor had he any special association with the Olympic Games.
He was chosen because he had been born in Hiroshima on the day the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb.
The final torchbearer in Atlanta in 1996 also evoked tremendous emotion and a similar sense that someone had got it wonderfully right.
The final torchbearer in Atlanta was the man once known throughout the world as “The Greatest”.
With a trembling hand Muhammad Ali, the winner in 1960 of an Olympic gold medal he later tossed into a river in disgust, lit the flame that burned throughout the Games.
Eight years earlier the lighting of the Olympic cauldron evoked a different set off emotions.
As the Seoul flame burst into life, some of the doves of peace that had just been released adopted an unwise flight path and were roasted.
For Australia, great Olympic moments have been many and varied.
From Edwin Flack in 1896 to the men’s hockey team that won the last of the country’s 17 gold medals in Athens, Australia has won 121 Olympic titles and collected 399 medals.
Along the way they have enriched the Olympics and provided a nation with heroes.
Bobby Pearce, the gold-medal sculler who stopped his boat in Antwerp in 1928 to allow a mother duck and her brood to cross the course; all of the swimmers from Freddie Lane in 1900 to Dawn Fraser to Shane Gould, Kieren Perkins, Susie O’Neill and Ian Thorpe; Bill Roycroft who dragged himself out of a hospital bed in Rome and onto his horse to help his team to a gold medal; Herb Elliott who was never beaten at 1500m and Peter Norman who didn’t need to win to be part of a special moment in Mexico City.
In track and field, where the pickings have recently been so slim, the most memorable moments have been provided by women athletes.
Betty Cuthbert was an 18-year-old in 1956 who thought so little of her prospects that she bought tickets to the Melbourne Games.
After being selected in the team she gave the tickets to her mum who watched her win three gold medals.
She then came back from disappointment in Rome to win the 400m in Tokyo.
Sometimes the circumstances add to the moment.
As they must have in 1952 to anyone listening at home on a crackling radio as a skinny kid they called “the Lithgow Flash” became a dual Olympic champion far away in Finland.
Marjorie Jackson won the 100m and 200m in Helsinki and her teammate Shirley Strickland won the 80m hurdles.
Almost half a century later, the current generation of Australians experienced what is almost certainly their greatest Olympic moment.
When Cathy Freeman won her 400m gold medal in Sydney, it was one of those rare occasions when every Australian who saw it shared the same emotion.
In Beijing, new legend and folklore will be written and new champions will arrive.
Thanks to the Baron.