A place to begin again

September at last and Sydney waits with its arms open. The immense harbour draws you in. The blue skies call you. The culture beckons you. The sense of celebration is magnetic. In the fair go, democratic spirit of the land, Australia greets everyone equally. A team of East Timorese, a handful of Somalians, America's buffed and pampered superstars. An Olympics as big and bold as you imagined it should be.

This is a town which should have the Olympics. Romance belongs here. Sydney is no hustlers' den like Atlanta was, but a town brimming with diversity and energy and ambition. If you dreamed of having a global celebration of sport this is where you dreamed of holding it. One of the world's great cities, perhaps its most breathtaking.

If you saw the harbour here 100 years ago you would have injuncted the locals against touching it. You don't molest perfection. Yet Jorn Uzron's Opera House and the immense lurching Harbour Bridge have transformed mere breath-thieving beauty into a triumphant song of the human spirit. If the Olympics are about possibilities, well this is a town which has been big enough and bold enough to explore them. You know the history. It's a place to be higher, faster, stronger. And cleaner.

People have meshed with nature here in a unique way. The chunky skyscrapers push towards the blue skies on either side of the harbour but red gums and the mangroves and the wattles haven't gone away. Nor have the other inhabitants. There's an Australian lurcher butterfly fluttering past. There's a kookaburra.

Nearby Homebush Bay has been transformed, its spires glinting like shiny pins as you come on it from a distance. Once an asphyxiated victim of a city's careless waste, it's now a clean-lined theatre ready to host the greatest of our feats. There's a love for nature there which has to be carried as a theme right through these Games. The IOC must hold its nerve. These must be the cleanest Games we can create.

Sydney. You'll love it even as it filters through your TV screen. Love the unabashed pride of Sydneysiders in their home. Think of them while you sit in Irish traffic sucking fumes and listening to the flip and the flop of your window wipers. There is no more inspiring commute to work than a sun-warmed putter in one of the olive and cream ferries which ply their way up and down this epic harbour to teeming Circular Quay.

Ah, the places. You can't pronounce their names without making a prose poem: Kirribilli to Woolloomooloo. Parramatta to Kogarah. Yarrawarrah. Illawong. Wingalla. Coogee and old Toongabbie too.

It's a city that has overcome (the hard way) its own frontiersman ignorance. It's not the hard-nosed, Anglified place which once closed the pubs and dumped the drunks on to the streets at teatime for the feast of sour vomiting and violence that was the six o'clock swill. It's not the crude, hard, white Australia it once was. Not the "two wongs don't make a white" environment it was 40 years ago.

It's a place of imperfections with a prime minister who can't say sorry for historic crimes against Aboriginals, but a place which has made Cathy Freeman the icon of these Games, a people eager to get on with the world rather than just to shake Austrlians Australians no longer feel their famous cultural cringe when the outside world inspects them. Why should they?

Tastes and influences of Asia and beyond are everywhere in Sydney now. Other colours and tongues, too. A thriving gay community and the world's splashiest mardi gras further confound the old prejudices. Australia deserves this Olympics because no place loves sport more or celebrates sport more. From the air the cities are patchworked with pitches, parks and pools. Sport is classless here. And they are so bloody good at it.

Quick. Name an international sport at which Australians don't compete? The young footballer of the year last season in the English Premiership (Harry Kewell) and the Footballer of the Year in Scotland (Mark Viduka) are Australians. In golf there are Greg Norman and Robert Allenby. In tennis Pat Rafter - and once there were Rod Laver and Pat Cash. There's a hopping shoal of swimmers.

There's Cathy Freeman and Steve Monighetti, Emma George and Georgie Clarke. There are Australian basketball players in the NBA in the United States and Australian players in baseball's major leagues. Horseracing is one of the country's biggest industries. And there's the rugby, both persuasions practised with stunning proficiency. And cricket. Australia are current world champions at women's hockey, netball and triathlon. Smart at beach volleyball, rowing, sailing and cycling. There is Aussie Rules of course. They even expect medals in shooting and gymnastics.

Okay, Luge. There are no Australian lugers. You had to think, though.

Sydney offers 17 days that might just restore your faith in sport. It offers stories and heroes and dramas and probably scandals. Sydney offers an enthusiasm which you had forgotten. An old-fashioned innocence, too. Every Australian team has a nickname. From Wallabies, Boomers and Olyroos to the rowing exploits of the Oarsome Foursome. Really. You can argue your sport here without irony or cynicism. They still have an idea of how things should be.

Let's enjoy Sydney's beautiful shock of the new. The least we can expect is beauty and drama and stories, but perhaps we'll be given more, perhaps we'll have a rebirth of old faith.

New century. New start. Let's begin in Sydney.