GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT: Yes, I'll be cheering our athletes. But the truth is my heart's no longer in the Olympics

The very prospect of these Games ought to lift the spirits of all of us who passionately love sport.

So why is it that my heart sinks? What was meant to be  -  what once really was  -  a great quadrennial celebration of the sporting spirit, of 'faster, higher, stronger', of ardent but honest competition between the finest athletes on earth, has been polluted by politics, consumed by professionalism, swamped by nationalism, tainted by doping and overwhelmed by an impossible giganticism.

Beijing 2008: 'Drugs, bungs and beach volleyball have snuffed out the Olympic flame'

Mindful of the men and women who have lived and trained for years with this one fortnight in mind, I take no pleasure in saying this.

But the truth is that the Olympics have seen too many high ideals sullied. Whatever triumphs are enjoyed in Beijing, something very precious has been lost.

You won't hear many such criticisms voiced from those there, least of all by the BBC.

The dear old Beeb  -  and 'dear' is the operative word for those of us who pay the licence fee  -  is heading for China mob-handed.

No fewer than 400 staff will be covering the Games (more than the Great Britain team itself), and for reasons not at all clear, the evening news will be presented from Beijing.

It would be interesting to learn after it's all over what portion of the annual income, and our licence fees, has been splurged on this absurd overkill.

British triple-jumper Phillips Idowu is a medal hopeful in Beijing

That indefinable lost sporting quality matters to us in this country more than anyone, because it was we who provided the spark which lit the original Olympic flame.

The very phrase 'sporting spirit' is scoffed at nowadays, but it was once taken very seriously, and Britain was acknowledged as its home.

When the public schools were reformed in the 19th century, they took to heart the ideal of 'mens sana in corpore sano'  ('a healthy mind in a healthy body').

This came to inspire many others from different countries.

Quite apart from giving its name to a game which would one day be played from South Wales to New Zealand, Rugby school exemplified this sporting spirit, from the age of its famous headmaster Dr Thomas Arnold.

And so it was that when the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin came to England in 1883, he visited Rugby and threw himself on his knees before the tomb of Dr Arnold.

It was with that pure athletic ideal in mind that Coubertin founded the modern Olympics, at Athens in 1896.

For years afterwards, they exemplified the essence of amateur sportsmanship.

Sport gave up amateurism some time ago, and the very word is used as a sneer, but an amateur is literally someone who does something for love.

That's why the story of the 1924 'Chariots of Fire' Olympics in Paris touches us even now, the idea that men who loved to run could still think there was something more important than winning.

First of the ideals to go was disinterested competition transcending politics and national rivalry. There was a shadow even at those Paris Games.

Heading the American team was an army officer, Major-General Douglas MacArthur, later famous (or notorious) as the vainglorious commander in the Pacific, who saw the Games as 'war without weapons'.

His attitude has been all too widely shared since.

For years past we've seen the Olympics purloined and sometimes befouled by politics. The most infamous case was the 'Nazi games' at Berlin in 1936, but even that didn't see an act of butchery like the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972.

Aong with the virus of nationalism, the cancer of commercialism spread, along with all its evil effects.

At Seoul in 1988, the extent of doping became clear when Ben Johnson failed a drugs test  -  since followed by, among others, Marion Jones. What made it worse was the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) shameful denial of the extent of doping.

The great Sir Roger Bannister  -  the first man to run a four-minute mile  -  grimly but truthfully says that the IOC ignored doping, believing that ' recognition of its pernicious and pervasive influence was bad news for spectators and sponsors, who would never know whether what they saw were triumphs of nature or drugs'.

Money talks, and this explains also why the Games have been so grotesquely expanded over the years, so that they are now, apart from anything else, far too big, and you have no idea what unlikely or bizarre event is going to pop up next.

Naturally, athletics is, with the 100 metres and Marathon, the heart and soul of the Games.

Cycling, rowing and fencing have been part of the Games for many years, and football is played by all mankind, even if the former excuse that the Olympic teams were amateur no longer applies  -  if it ever really did.

On the other hand, what baseball and softball  -  yes, both of them  -  are doing at the Olympics is a mystery which might be explained only by the American advertisers who exercise huge clout.

Still, even they are, at least, real games, watched by large numbers of Americans if not many others.

But beach volleyball and synchronised swimming? If these are Olympic sports, they might as well include shoveha'penny and deck quoits.

Any lingering suspicions about how some obscurer sports were added to the Olympic roster have been answered.

The cycling events now include keirin, a track sprint paced behind a motorbike which was invented in Japan and is passionately followed there but nowhere else.

It was, according to leaked documents given Olympic status after the passing of large sums of money to the UCI, cycling's ruling body, which worked hard to get the event into the Games. What other sordid deals are still to be unearthed?

And, of course, there is the not-so-small matter of where these Games are being held.

No one can have felt the same about the Beijing Olympics since the grotesque spectacle in April of the Olympic torch carried through London, guarded by sinister Chinese goons using brute force against protesters.

The sight of great athletes in action can be affecting, but not more so than the awful sight just witnessed of ordinary people in Beijing protesting because their homes were torn down to make way for these Games.

Every sports lover must ask him or herself: what human price is worth paying for his enjoyment?

Does this mean that I shall be ignoring the Olympics? Well, of course not. Our boys and girls might not play much part blue-riband sprints, but Phillips Idowu could take gold in the triple jump, or Frankie Gavin in the lightweight boxing.

Part of my heart will be longing for them to win and even more with our cyclists. If Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Victoria Pendleton and Rebecca Romero can repeat their glorious performances at Manchester in the world championships, I shall surely cheer.

If only we could cheer with all our hearts. Would Coubertin himself do so, if he could see what his 'Olympic spirit' now means?