Marion Jones appeared on Oprah Winfrey's television show Wednesday. It was a tearful interview, her first after serving time in the slammer for lying about steroid use.

She went to a minimum-security prison in Fort Worth, Texas, for six months because she lied to federal investigators about using steroids. Some say the cover-up was worse than the crime. That's false. By further tainting a drug-plagued sport that needed her to be the symbol of excellence and honor, she almost ruined track and field.

Jones was the last great American sprinting icon. In the 2000 Olympics, she ran like no woman had since Florence Griffith Joyner. Flo Jo faced drug suspicions in Seoul in 1988, too, but she passed every test. Of course, so did Jones.

Jones couldn't mask her shame and sorrow Wednesday the way perverted science could mask the reason for her performances. After her guilty plea came the long slide of the sport into dishonor and irrelevance, as NBC tucked track and field into obscure corners of its programming in 2008.

A commercial that ran on radio during the Beijing Olympics missed the point it was trying to make as completely as anything I can remember, outside maybe Shaquille O'Neal at the free-throw line.

In a smirking way, it pointed out that an Olympic gold medal is not really made of gold and that, having only gold gilt on its surface, is worth "about $220."

Of course, it is not what it is made of, but what the competitors who win one are made of that matters. An Olympic gold medal, which must be won against competition from around the world, unlike baseball's grandly named "World Series," is the most precious and easily recognizable athletic emblem in the world.

I discuss the actual composition of the gold medal in my book about 2004 Olympic pole vault gold medalist Tim Mack. Of the gold medal the Westlake native wore on the day his alma mater of St. Ignatius High School honored him, I wrote that the medal is really sterling silver with about six grams (about one-fifth of an ounce) of gold gilding it.

APLeBron James, right, applauds as he watches Olympic swimming competitions Aug. 13.

Because I can still see the Opening Ceremonies in my head.

Because the first people who greeted us gave a small bow, a symbol of respect that repeated itself every day.

Because of Michael Phelps.

Because of his mother.

Because of stories that turn on one hundredth of a second.

Because of NBA players jumping up and down at center court, as if they'd just won a high school title.

Because of seeing Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, unannounced, clapping for U.S. athletes at the pool.

BEIJING -- It's 1:30 a.m. and the world's fastest man is in a partying mood. Jamaican music blares from the speakers of the dance club, and Usain Bolt already is glistening with sweat.

Photographers press in around Bolt, who is rocketing to fame as fast as he sped along the 100-meter and 200-meter Olympic track, smashing world records.

For a moment, the photographers press a little too close. Bolt grabs the microphone, calls the DJ to quiet the music and pleads: "You may be able to take some pictures, but right now we just wanna dance. Give us two hours. We just ask for two hours."

BEIJING -- The venues were great, the competition was exciting and no major international incident stained the Olympic Games that concluded here Sunday.

Yet was that enough to call these Games a success?

That question hung over the Olympics as hundreds of thousands of athletes, journalists and other visitors said goodbye to Beijing, concluding what was the most watched and most competitive Olympics ever.

Everyone agreed that the Games were a technical success, but debate continued about whether the International Olympic Committee had honored the Olympic spirit by awarding the Games to a country led by an authoritarian government with little taste for dissent or transparency.

BEIJING -- In this army, the uniform is a leotard.

The 6-year-old gymnast has an innocent face but legs that are muscular, more like a 16-year-old's. With her coach wearing the scowl of a ruler-clenching nun, the little soldier sprints across the mat and unleashes a dazzlingly proficient floor routine, showing flexibility and flips worthy of a standing ovation. When she finishes, her coach speaks only with steely eyes.

At the Shichahai Sports School, 600 athletes, many as young as 6, are being trained by top coaches. The goal is gold.

This factory's assembly-line approach has paid off handsomely. Alumni from schools such as this one vaulted China to 51 gold medals in the Beijing Games, the most of any nation, and the first time China has won the gold medal count.

BEIJING -- Let's start this discussion on China's Olympics back at the start. The Opening Ceremony was staggeringly beautiful. Remember that cute girl with the wonderful voice? The children of China's 56 ethnic groups holding hands and bringing the torch? The boxes and tai chi athletes moving as one?

Yes, it sure was beautiful.

It was a lie, too.

At least in the manner we consider the truth. For instance, the 9-year-old girl was cute. But it wasn't her voice being used. The real singer's face was "not suitable," musical director Chen Qijant told Beijing Radio. "The audience will understand it's in the national interest."

Do you understand, audience? Well? Because this phrase is key to gaining some surface grasp of China: national interest. The children of the 56 ethnic groups were represented, but not as portrayed. They were just mainly the majority Han race dressed up as all the groups.

But in the national interest, it sure looked swell.

APRohullah Nikpai's taekwondo bronze medal, the first medal for Afghanistan, ended up being worth a house, a car and $20,000 cash.

If you're a U.S. gold medal winner, the answer is $25,000 courtesy of the U.S. Olympic Committee plus millions more in potential endorsement deals. A silver medal comes with a $15,000 prize, and a bronze medal brings in $10,000.

If you're Chinese, your gold medal is worth least $150,000 in national government prize money plus, yes, millions of dollars more in potential endorsement deals, according to a top Chinese athletics expert. Silver and bronze also pay.

If you're Afghan taekwondo bronze medal winner Rohullah Nikpai, the first Afghan to ever win an Olympic medal, you go home with a new house in the Afghan capital of Kabul courtesy of President Hamid Karzai, a new Toyota sedan and $20,000 from the Afghan-American owner of the country's main cell phone network.

BEIJING -- Just before the medal ceremony, U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon was handed a cell phone. "You won! You won! You won!" his wife Elisabeth yelled from 6,000 miles away, the middle of the night her time.

McCutcheon didn't need to answer.

"We were just listening to each other smile on the phone," McCutcheon said.

In 16 days, McCutcheon's life has been transformed. He lost his father-in-law and won a gold medal.

AP PhotoLeBron James brings a gold medal home to Cleveland.

After a horrible 2004 showing in Athens, Greece, that totally reshuffled how international basketball is done in the U.S., the Americans at the Beijing Games set things right with a bruising 118-107 victory over Spain in the gold medal game Sunday.

The Americans overwhelmed everyone for seven games, but they led by only four points with just over two minutes to play. Then they proved they could handle a close game that seemed would never come in Beijing.

Their prize: the first U.S. gold medal since the 2000 Olympics.

"Much respect to Spain, but the U.S. is back on top again," Cavaliers superstar and Akron native LeBron James said.

BEIJING -- The American men's water polo team couldn't pull off what might have been dubbed the Miracle in Water, losing to a more experienced Hungarian team after a rousing back-and-forth battle in the gold-medal match.

The burly Hungarians attacked relentlessly throughout the game, poking holes in what, until the final game, had been a stingy American defense. The 14-10 victory at Beijing's Yingdong Natatorium was the third straight Olympic gold medal for Hungary. In the semifinal, the U.S. had allowed Serbia just five goals.

"They were shooting the ball well today, and when they get going like that, they are tough to stop," said Ryan Bailey, the U.S. man in the middle, who took a beating up front.

"You never want to get in a scoring battle with the Hungarians because they are such great shooters. We wanted to make it a defensive game, but we just didn't get it done."

Matt Dunham, APCuba's Angel Valodia Matos' kick of Sweden judge Chakir Chelbat, right, during a bronze-medal taekwondo match was not a high point of the Olympics.

Olympic afterthoughts, or why I'm glad I didn't follow my dream to become an Olympic taekwondo referee . . .

I'll take the Redeem Team. You can have the Dream Team.

Not that this one could beat that one. Who cares? This time around, NBA stars sat and watched other Olympians perform, didn't use their days off to fly somewhere to golf, and didn't use the American flag to cover themselves because their Olympic uniforms weren't Nike-issued.

Oh, yeah. And they won, playing together and even playing defense (at least up until the gold-medal game).

Olympic Records

By the Associated Press

Through Aug. 24, 2008

WORLD RECORDS SET

ARCHERY

Women's Team (70m) Quarterfinal -- South Korea (Joo Hyun-Jung, Park Sung-Hyun, Yun Ok-Hee), 231, Aug. 10, 2008. Previous record: 228, South Korea (Yun Ok-Hee, Yun Mi-Jin, Lee Tuk Young), Sept. 29, 2006, Shanghai, China.

ATHLETICS

Men's 100 - Final -- Usain Bolt, Jamaica, 9.69, Aug. 16, 2008. Previous record: 9.72, Bolt, May 31, 2008, New York.

Men's 200 - Final -- Usain Bolt, Jamaica, 19.30, Aug. 20, 2008. Previous record: 19.32, Michael Johnson, Aug. 1, 1996, Atlanta.

Men's 4x100 Relay - Final -- Jamaica (Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell), 37.10, Aug. 22, 2008. Previous record: 37.40, United States (Jon Drummond, Andre Cason, Dennis Mitchell, Leroy Burrell), Aug. 21, 1993, Stuttgart, Germany.

Women's 3000 Steeplechase - Final -- Gulnara Galkina-Samitova, Russia, 8:58.81, Aug. 17, 2008. Previous record: 9:01.59, Gulnara Galkina-Samitova, Russia, July 4, 2004, Heraklion, Greece.

Women's Pole Vault -- Elena Isinbaeva, Russia, 5.05, Aug. 18, 2008. Previous record: 5.04, Isinbaeva, July 29, 2008, Monaco.

The word "inspiring" gets tossed around too much during the Olympics. I try to avoid it because I know the truly inspiring athletes arrive at Olympic venues weeks after the Closing Ceremonies.

So, I was a little surprised to hear David Lee use it during a phone conversation we had Sunday afternoon.

"Looking into the athletes' eyes and seeing their determination to compete is very inspiring for me," he said. "My goal always is to be the best for the U.S. in the Olympics. When I see it in their inner hearts and souls, it makes me dig deeper for my Olympics."

BEIJING -- The stage is bare, the seats are empty and you can hear your voice echo off the ceiling. On any given night a musical or a concert might take place here. On Sunday mornings, however, around 7, people enter the 21st Century Theater off Liangmaqiao Road carrying wires, microphones and large posters of Christian religious symbols. Within a few hours, services are being held. There is praying. There is a sermon. It mimics, on most levels, what happens every Sunday in churches across America.

Except in Beijing you need a foreign passport to get in. If you are Chinese, you are turned away.

And by 1:30 in the afternoon, everything comes down.

You can shop in this country. You can drive in this country. You can dance and sing and make a fortune in this country. Yet you can't have multiple children and you can't pray where you wish and you can't say anything you please.

With the end of these Summer Olympics, viewers rub their weary eyes and marvel at what they have seen. Others question what they have seen. Others criticize what they have seen.

BEIJING -- There's a famous Chinese saying, first spoken by the old revolutionary Deng Xiaoping, that people here repeat all the time. It goes like this: "Whether the cat is black or white makes no difference. As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat."

Deng was, at the time, referring to China's economic policy, but years later it serves as the perfect quote to sum up the Beijing Olympic Games. Nobody is quite sure if these Olympics have been a black or white cat. Nobody is quite sure what's real, what's make believe, what's inspirational, what's computer generated, what's a triumph of the human spirit and what's a testament to the capacity of human deception. These have been a wonderful and baffling Olympics, all at the same time.

One thing we do know: These Olympics caught mice. More people across the world watched these Olympics than ever before. And never before has a nation put on such a show. From a gravity-bending Opening Ceremony to Michael Phelps' dramatic effort to win eight golds to Usain Bolt's stunning and light-hearted show of speed to the astounding dominance of Chinese athletes, these Olympics flowed with the sort of precision and force usually associated with military invasions.

Review the performances of U.S. Olympians who had ties to Ohio in our interactive presentation.

The Plain Dealer's Tim Warsinskey reviews their performances in this interactive graphic, a tour of top performances.