There are lies, damned lies, and this ...
From a "population-adjusted" medals table done after the 2004 Olympics, it turns out that of the 75 nations whose athletes finished on the podium in Athens, China was No. 68 on the efficiency list, meaning, only seven countries had worse medals-to-population ratios.
Of course, by the same calculation, Bahamas was No. 1 with two medals from only 314,000 people. To which the only possible response is: 1.32 billion Chinese don't care.
Their athletes were second in the only standings that really matter, the gold-medal tally.
Of China's 63 medals in Athens, 32 were gold, putting them just three behind the United States four years ago. Populations be damned.
And 1.32 billion citizens of this hell-bent-for-glory country do care -- deeply -- about what transpires between now and Aug. 24 to make up the deficit.
It has much to prove in these Games, China does.
How to present a face to the world that does not come across pushy and militaristic. How to get through three weeks without lowering the iron boot on dissenting opinions while simultaneously trying to keep the terrorists outside the Olympic gates.
But mostly, how to knock the socks off the cynics by being bigger and better -- and, naturally, higher-faster-stronger -- than anyone else.
As far as John Furlong is concerned, the bigger, better part is as good as done.
"There's no question that Beijing has proven that they are capable of anything. It's astonishing," said the head of Vancouver-Whistler's 2010 Olympic organizing committee (VANOC), who was having his hair cut in the Main Press Centre's barber shop yesterday.
"I've been to Beijing six times, and seen six different cities. And it's all been in three years.
''You come down the street, and the trees that they've planted aren't six feet high, they're 60 feet high. Just coming in from the airport this time, we were asking: 'Is this the road we came in on last time?' Last time was only four months ago."
The physical structure itself, though eye-popping, is not so shocking considering the estimated $43 billion China has invested in the Games to date, not to mention, in Furlong's words "the human capital" -- hundreds of thousands of labourers, maintenance staff and young volunteers -- involved in the effort.
The stunning part is the ascent of the Chinese Olympic team, which had never won a gold medal until small-bore rifle shooter Xu Haifeng won in Los Angeles in 1984. Think about that. Zero gold medals until a shooter won one in a Games boycotted by the Olympic juggernaut Soviet Union.
And 24 years later, they're poised to top the medal standings at a home-country Olympics.
Don't think it couldn't happen.
The forces of home-court advantage and pressure may balance each other out, but China hasn't left many stones unturned to put its strongest-possible athletes on stage here. Some say they've done a fast shuffle of birthdates on a gymnast or two to make them appear to have met the minimum-age standard. Elsewhere it has been written that Chinese athletes who would have liked to retire after Athens were strong-armed into continuing.
Furlong, whose committee has been scrutinized forthe entire five years since winning the 2010 bid, empathizes with the difficulties of the Beijing organizers.
"When you're trying to do this, you always want to be judged on the big picture and not have it broken down into small pockets. It's real easy to look at something and say, 'Yeah, this is good, but what about that?'" Furlong said. "They've certainly demonstrated, by any fair standard, that human beings are capable of amazing things.
"So I hope that what happens out of this is that they are given the benefit of a fair test, and that people really judge this for the execution of the event, and the sport. I have a person who's been driving me around and she tells me they estimate there will be one billion people tuned into the opening ceremonies on television. One billion people.
"And you want it to be good for them. On the street, you feel the sense that people are really hoping for a great, proud couple of weeks, and I hope they get it."
He called the view from the top of the hill of the Olympic Green -- comprising 10 competition venues, the Olympic Village and the Main Press Centre and International Broadcast Centre -- "one of the top 10 most impressive things I have ever seen in my life."
The scope and scale of everything in Beijing is massive, and so are the Olympic venues and so are their costs.
Furlong's prediction is that Beijing will retire the crown of "Best Ever."
If former IOC head Juan Antonio Samaranch were still awarding that distinction at the end of the Games, he'd have to come up with a new title for next time.
"They've really thought it out, every little detail. And I really think that anyone who tried to replicate it ... there's no percentage in it. This is the best that there has ever been," Furlong said, "and we'll have to be great/different.
"We're in a city right now where the best men and women of all time have assembled -- these are the best athletes that have ever been born -- and they couldn't have built a more magnificent backdrop for them.
"I just sort of feel a spirit of wonder, because you're never going to see something like this again. There will be great Olympics, but it won't be this. I think it will be fantastic to be able to look back and say I was here.
"I have no idea what people are going to feel (at the opening ceremony) on Friday night, but I bet there'll be people reaching for words to describe it."
