By Rob K. Silverstein
Executive Producer

Greetings from 35,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean around 5 hours into a 12-hour journey to Beijing and the Summer Olympic Games which begin at 08.08.08 at 8 PM.

These are my 9th Olympic Games. My first experience was for a camp trip in 1976 to Montreal where the city spent over $2 billion and it took the Montrealers decades to get out of debt. For these games the Chinese have spent $40 billion alone on Olympic venues, that's more than adjusted for inflation. 

(This post is also available at Rob Silverstein's "Access Hollywood Confidential" Blog at TVWeek.com)

I am a huge Olympic fan having grown up watching the Games on ABC with Roone Arledge at the controls. My first memories were the 1968 Mexico City Games followed then by the tragic Munich Games of 1972. I was 12 at the time and will never forget the late, great Jim McKay bringing us the news, "they’re all gone," as the Israeli athletes were senselessly murdered by Palestinian terrorists in, of all places, Germany.  

I also recall my first real sense of patriotism every time an American won and my first sense of sporting outrage and frustration when the USA lost to the Soviet Union in "our game," basketball, in one of the most bizarre and controversial endings in sports history. I believe the reason I went into TV was due to my fascination with the Olympic Games.

So 20 years after the '72 games, in 1992, a dream I had as a kid came true when I worked my first Olympic Games in Albertville, France, for CBS Sports. I went on to work at the '94 games in Lillehammer, Norway, also for CBS. After that, I left sports but still loved the Games -- going to Atlanta, then Salt Lake City right after 9-11 with my wife, and then Athens, Greece and Torino, Italy... all 3 for Access.

My most memorable Olympics, and they are all memorable though, was 1980 Lake Placid, NY... Cold War America not feeling good about ourselves similar to today, and then out of nowhere, and only sports can do this, a group of young upstart Americans strung together the performances of their lives and stunned the world with the "Miracle on Ice." I was there with my dad and brother and can still hear the crowd chanting "USA, USA," as goalie Jim Craig skated around the ice draped in the American flag searching for his dad in the crowd.