The start of the Beijing Olympics on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year will no doubt come as a huge relief to the organisers who have had to endure their fair share of negative publicity in the run-up to the Games over alleged human rights abuses and the like.

Strangely, the build-up to this Olympics has had very little to do with the Games themselves. In previous Olympics – say Sydney or Athens – the marketing machines would have been in overdrive, with bytes about the latest American sprint product (doped, as it turns out) or how some long-legged Australian was going to swim the Channel using one hand and one hand only.

For the first time in a while no one is talking about what records are under threat and how one person or the other is going to blow all the competition out of the park.

This year the talk is about pollution and human rights abuses. Oh, did I mention the pollution? And how some governments are saying that in the event of there being bad air they will not force their team members to take part. What a farce.

Of course, the fact that the world is going broke is not helping matters much – eyes are trained firmly on the price of oil and how it affects us all. Add to that the fact that some might not even get to watch the Olympics as they have been kicked out of their home, thanks to this sub-prime lending debacle business.