This was a relatively cheap ticket. The sheaf of tickets I ordered back in the States from the sole U.S. ticket distributor, Cartan, cost an average of about $150 U.S. each, with some events like gymnastics going much higher. My supposedly "good" A-category (but in fact mile-high) seats for the track and field events cost $126; the opening and closing ceremonies about $800 each. Of course, these prices -- and the fact that there are no discounts for children -- make it impossible for families to go to glamour events, or even many events at all. An Australian family I was talking with in line a few days ago were searching through the schedule, trying to find handball or softball or table tennis or something they could take their kids to without spending hundreds of dollars.

Anyway, I was in! Olympics soccer semifinals with the home team, baby! I tried to find some ticketless person outside the venue who wanted my boxing ticket, but nobody was interested. Well, it wasn't my money, home boy. Feeling in need of fortification after the wet, blind bike ride and the Mean Volunteer, I ordered a double scotch and a Foster's and carried them up to my seat -- which naturally, since it wasn't Cartan, proved to be the best seat I've had the entire time I've been here. It was in its own little closed row, close to midfield and was even under the overhang. Ha! I got out the binocs, got out my notebook, took a soothing sip of the restoring fluid -- and was almost deafened by a cascade of loud yells. They were coming from all over the stadium, but the loudest emanated from the row right behind me.

"Go Spain!" they brayed. "Go Spain!"

The chanters were, of course, Australians.

Being a guest in a foreign country, you tend to be on your good behavior. As an American, you especially don't want to confirm unpleasant stereotypes. But being a fan at an Olympic sporting event gives you more latitude to support your team. And hell, I had more right to root for the U.S. than these clowns, who probably wouldn't know a tapa from a beer tap, did to root for Spain. So after the guys behind me were done screaming for their close personal friends from Real Madrid, I cut loose with a lusty "Go USA!" -- then turned back and looked at them with a smile.

It was nominally a good-sportsmanship smile, a since-we're-neighbors-let's-be-friends smile, a let's-be-cool-and-enjoy-the-game smile, but actually I was pissed. Ever since the Cuba-U.S. women's basketball game, when the Australian fans screamed and yelled for the Cubans, a country with whom they are linked by inseparable bonds of blood, history and ideology, I'd been brooding semi-bitterly over the openly anti-U.S. sentiment displayed by the Aussie fans. I knew my reaction was irrational, that I shouldn't take it personally, but ridiculous as it sounds, it actually hurt my feelings. What had the U.S. done to Australia that every sports fan in the country -- and that pretty much means everybody in this country -- had it in for us? OK, we were a giant, an 800-pound gorilla on the world stage, but weren't we a kindly giant, a big-hearted 800-pound gorilla? We might boast a little at times, have a tendency to smugness, sometimes be blinkered and provincial -- but hey, nobody's perfect! Couldn't they at least try to hide their animus a bit, in the interests of the Olympic spirit? I mean, I wasn't going to every event with the express purpose of rooting against one particular country.

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