It's the bell lap for the Beijing Olympic Games, and the Twin Cities are in a sprint with Salt Lake City and Denver to take gold as the TV market with the highest degree of Olympic fever. Nielsen television ratings indicate that the 2008 games have captured our imagination -- and remote controls -- more than Athens (2004), Sydney (2000) and even the 1996 "home games" in Atlanta, before technological transformations such as e-mail, iPods, DVRs and other gee-whiz wizardry had fully fractured and fragmented media consumption.

Of course the purpose of high-tech gadgets is often still to tell an old-fashioned story. And what a story it's been, with the Olympics emerging as the best sporting event -- let alone reality show, drama or, yes, comedy -- in years. And with every story needing a hero, Baltimore's boy-next-door with otherworldly talent, swimmer Michael Phelps, is straight out of central casting. Phelps accomplished an athletic achievement rarely, if ever, seen in sports: Living up to, and beyond, the hype.

To be sure, the ratings were helped by live coverage, with swimming scheduled for the morning in Beijing. This created the electricity of Olympic history being made in real time without the race results getting out online.

But the Internet is a double-edged sword: As much as it can spoil the suspense, it can also create it. The online news and blogging buzz for the visual and visceral beauty of the Opening Ceremonies most likely increased viewership hours later in America.

The opening ceremonies also opened one of the Games' first (and inevitable) controversies, as fake fireworks ("digital enhancements" in today's media-speak) and fake singing (a 9-year-old lip-synching a stirring rendition of "Ode to the Motherland") were revealed.

But considering that fears of doping and smog clouded the run-up to the Games, the fact that the biggest controversy over competition was whether the gold-medal Chinese female gymnasts could get into a PG-13 film was, well, kid's stuff.

The unity we expect to see at Sunday's closing ceremonies will yield to the political conventions, which, if not designed to divide, end up doing so anyway. But at least for a fortnight, Beijing's "One World, One Dream" Games seem to have seized the collective consciousness of two cities -- Minneapolis and St. Paul -- as well as the rest of Minnesota, revealing once again the universality of sport -- and humanity.