That’s what you tell yourself. You vow to be a cold-eyed observer. And then you walk back into the Olympic Park and watch a medal ceremony, and your lips start trembling again.

What is it about Olympic medal ceremonies that is so moving? I have seen dozens of them now over two Olympics, not to mention the hundreds I’ve seen on TV through the years, and I never get tired of them. Nor does anyone else. When the medal ceremonies are announced, the vast crowd in the Olympic Stadium falls silent.

I think the appeal of the medal ceremony goes beyond athletics. It answers a fundamental need we have to honor excellence — a need that goes largely unmet in our public lives. As a society, we don’t award prizes — all we have are superficial glitterfests like the Academy Awards, or specialized awards like the Pulitzer Prize. The closest thing are medals for military valor and the Nobel Prize, but they don’t have the universal appeal of an Olympic medal.

An Olympic medal honors the victors in a contest. This is important. By honoring the victors, we pay tribute to everything that victory means — triumph over one’s opponent, over the world, over oneself. To win in a contest against mighty opponents is to have fully realized one’s potential — and that deed honors all of humanity. That’s why in honoring victory, we also honor the losers: without their great efforts, the victory would mean nothing. Achilles would not be Achilles without Hector. That’s why it’s so important that three medals, not just one, are given out — it means that there isn’t only one victor. Whatever its color, a medal commemorates what humans can do when pushed to their limits. Forget the leeching future and the haunting past, a medal says: Let’s pay homage to today.

And the simple act of paying homage may be the most important thing of all. For not only do we not honor excellence in our daily lives, we don’t honor anything. We have no rituals that allow us to salute our fellow humans. That’s why the humility we feel during a medal ceremony is rarer than gold. Watching the athletes stand on the podium, we throw away the dross and carping chatter of our minds, quieting ourselves to a state of reverence — you could almost say of love. It is the way a parent feels about his or her child. And sometimes, watching the happiness on the faces of the athletes on the medal stands, men and women of all colors, nationalities and backgrounds, it’s impossible to resist the heart-quickening thought that they are all — that we are all — children of one family.

Most of those who stand on the podium feel something like this, too. At least, they feel that the moment is larger than them, as it is larger than those of us watching, and it is lovely and poignant and funny to watch them trying to come to terms with that fact.

At the Olympic Stadium Wednesday night, three faces stood out on the victory stand. I remember them because the moment seemed to strip each of them to who they were, all the way down — so that 100,000 people looking at the huge screen in the stadium, and millions more around the world, could see something on their faces that only their parents, or lovers, had ever seen.

The first face was that of Kazakhstan hurdler Olga Shishigina, who won the 100-meter hurdles. On the track she looked tough and dauntless, but on the stand a completely different person emerged. Shishigina had the deepest, most soulful eyes, like those of a little girl waiting to take first communion. The poetry of the moment did not escape her: It seemed to float above her, and she was content to shyly watch it, like a timid forest creature or a saint to whom a blessed vision had appeared.

Then there was Germany’s Nils Schumann, who won the 800 meters in a split-second upset over the great Danish runner Wilson Kipketer. Schumann seemed overwhelmed by what he had done, and as he stood on the stand, he kept rubbing the bridge of his nose, with an expression on his face that looked almost sad. Maybe some emotions are so great that they take the form of their opposites.

And finally, there was American hurdler Angelo Taylor, who won the 400-meter hurdles. Under his cornrows Taylor had the sweetest, most innocent face, and as he stood waiting to receive his medal, constantly changing expressions of naive wonder and childlike surprise and utter joy flitted across it. After the ceremony he fumbled to pose correctly with the other runners, a young man who found himself suddenly on the biggest stage in the world and didn’t know quite what to do. He was every American’s kid, and we were as proud of his innocence and his confusion and his decency as we were of his feat on the track. I was, anyway.

And the American national anthem played, and we all stood in respect, as we do for every anthem. Angelo Taylor stood there. And looking at his shining face, I remembered a line from Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”: “I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside of them.”

Korean delegates erupted in cheers in the conference hall after IOC President Jacques Rogge opened a sealed envelope and read the words: “The International Olympic Committee has the honor of announcing that the 23rd Olympic Winter Games in 2018 are awarded to the city of Pyeongchang.”

The vote totals weren’t immediately released.

A majority was required for victory, meaning Pyeongchang received at least 48 votes among the eligible 95 voters.

It was the first time an Olympic bid race with more than two finalists was decided in the first round since 1995, when Salt Lake City defeated three others to win the 2002 Winter Games.

Had no majority been reached in the opening round, the city with the fewest votes would have been eliminated and the two remaining cities gone to a second and final ballot.

Pyeongchang had been determined to win in the first round after its previous two defeats. The Koreans had led in each of the first rounds in the votes for the 2010 and 2014 Games but then lost in the final ballots to Vancouver and Sochi.

Pyeongchang, whose slogan is “New Horizons,” campaigned on the theme that it deserved to win on a third try and will spread the Olympics to a lucrative new market in Asia and become a hub for winter sports in the region.

The Korean victory followed the IOC’s trend in recent votes, having taken the Winter Games to Russia (Sochi) for the first time in 2014 and giving South America its first Olympics with the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Now, the International Olympic Committee has reportedly written a letter to the Canadian National Olympic Committee “to find out a few more details,” and the team has issued a public apology. What’s the big deal, you might ask? For one, 18-year-old team member Marie-Philip Poulin was snapped holding a beer, and she’s just under the legal drinking age in British Columbia. OK, so that’s inappropriate, I guess — only, in her home of Quebec, the drinking age is 18. Are people really that scandalized that someone just weeks away from her 19th birthday was caught imbibing in Vancouver after winning an Olympic gold medal?

I suspect not. Judging by the online chatter over the “incident,” the age issue is but one more complaint shoveled onto the pile. Primarily at issue is that some perceive it as a display of poor sportsmanship, which I find kind of hilarious for two reasons: 1.) Ice hockey is one of the most impolite professional sports around (within five minutes of the first men’s hockey game I attended, two players had already resorted to fisticuffs on the ice), and 2.) Have these people never witnessed the hooting, hollering, fist-pumping, champagne-popping, and exclamations of “I’m goin’ to Disneyland!” at, like, any major sporting event? 

I hate to be predictable, but I gotta say it: I suspect there’s also a definite undercurrent of sexism here. For example, one blogger wrote:

My question is: Why ‘ladies’ play men’s sports and look so awkward (unlady like) in the process? Being a woman is all about being a woman (grace, softness…). Figure skating is by all standards a women’s sport, as we witnessed yesterday in Kim Yu-Na’s performance. Simply brilliant.

So ladies, make an attempt to look like females, stay away from men’s sports, don’t try to be like men, you know, that’s what the men are for.

Aw, I think he’s scared of the big bad lady athletes. Poor dude — we just aren’t used to seeing women engaged in such stereotypically manly celebration. Not only are they drinking beer, they’re also chugging champagne and smoking cigars. Looking through the photographs, you can almost hear their self-satisfied guttural belches — and, you know what? It makes me swoon in full-blown girl-crush mode. I mean, my cheeks actually ache because every time I catch a glimpse of those snapshots, I grin uncontrollably. Now these are some women I’d like to grab a beer with.

Why don’t all the haters take a note from these Canadian ladies: Grab a Molson’s and chill out, eh?