Twenty years ago, Vaughan Smith was a teen-aged swimmer from Zimbabwe heading to Seoul, South Korea, for the Olympics. He heard all the usual rumblings.

"They had strife with North Korea. Luckily, nothing major happened," said Mr. Smith, who is entering his second season as the men's and women's water polo coach at Washington & Jefferson College.

"There's always going to be anxiety with the political thing at the Olympics."

Certainly, the talk during the run-up to Friday's opening ceremony for the 2008 Games in Beijing has been studded with politics and ancillary issues. It seems there are as many questions about conditions in China as there are about competition.

Will American swimmer Michael Phelps be able to win a record-setting eight gold medals?

Will this version of the United States "Dream Team" win gold in men's basketball?

Will host China further inflate national pride by winning the medals race?

Will the athletes be able to breathe?

China is opening its doors not only to the globe's top athletes but also to the eyes of the world.

Perhaps those eyes will be dazzled by the modern, almost pop-art Olympic venues set against longtime symbols as Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, or by the top-flight sporting events.

It's unclear if that will be enough to quiet concerns over human rights issues, Chinese policies affecting Tibet and Darfur, or the environmental toll from China's surge into the 21st century.

"I hope they lay that stuff aside for the 2 1/2 weeks," said United States men's marathoner Brian Sell, a native of Woodbury, Pa.

"I think it's ridiculous they mix politics and the Olympics, but this is a world stage so some people want to use that to make a statement."

Fans in the U.S. shouldn't have any trouble following the Games' many story lines. NBC will offer 3,600 television hours of coverage on its network and on USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD, plus the Internet.

Rob Ruck, a senior lecturer in history at Pitt and sports historian, said he wouldn't be surprised if someone takes a public stand during the Olympics along the lines of American track medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who in 1968 raised their gloved fists on the podium in Mexico City to signify black power and to protest racism.

"What happens if a couple athletes win their medals and use that opportunity?" Mr. Ruck asked about Beijing. "I guess it depends on how much attention it draws. It's not like the Chinese have a lot of experience in sanctioning protests."

Perhaps the most famous mix of politics and the Olympics involving a host country came in 1936 in Adolf Hitler's Berlin. There also was the American boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow, the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and a boycott by African nations in 1976, when the Olympics were in Montreal. The Seoul Games of 1988 were South Korea's coming-out party.

"In some ways, what's going on with these Games is very similar to what's gone on in many Games," Mr. Ruck said. "There's always great drama."

Mr. Ruck contends that within China, the citizens mostly are caught up in the competition and rooting for their athletes. That, he said, is just what Chinese officials want.

"China is the emerging power of the 21st century, and they have spent $40 billion to promote these games," Mr. Ruck said. "It's kind of like Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac -- they're too big as organizations to fail. China is more concerned about the domestic impact of these Games than they are the foreign impact.

"They have invested more in building a sport power than any nation has invested before."

More simply, China has tapped into the fan aspect of the Games to promote cohesiveness in a way Steelers, Penguins and Pirates faithful can appreciate.

"Sport provides that kind of psychological lift that we in Pittsburgh know about," Mr. Ruck said.

So as long as any protests are small in proportion to the whole of the athletic competition, it's the sport that will matter.

That's the way it usually is for the athletes.

"It's a great experience to be around athletes from a hundred other countries, all in one place," Mr. Smith said. "Just seeing some of the elite athletes, standing in the dinner line with [tennis great] Steffi Graff, or being around a guy who was my hero, [British decathlete] Daley Thompson, just brushing shoulders with him and seeing him walking down the street. Or being there with [big-name swimmers] Matt Biondi, Janet Evans, Michael Gross."

Mr. Sell is one of 596 athletes -- 310 men, 286 women -- scheduled to compete for the U.S. in China and one of many regional entries, a list headed by sprinter Lauryn Williams, a Rochester native who won the silver medal in the women's 100-meter dash in 2004.

Mr. Sell's event, the marathon, comes on the final day of the Games, Aug. 24. He is aware of the possibility of disruptions before then or even a postponement if the air quality is ruled too poor to run 26.2 miles through Beijing.

"I've got to go with whatever happens," he said. "It's pretty much my only shot, so I don't really care" about the external things.

Olympian Mike Friedman, a cyclist from Peters, can tell you first-hand about the effects of the Beijing smog. He competed there in December.

"Standing in the infield after racing, you look at lights and they had a halo around them," he said. "Your eyes feel like when you climb out of a pool with too much chlorine."

He used eye drops, hot tea with honey and milk and steam from his shower to try to combat the smog.

He'll have some other resources this time, thanks to the United States Olympic Committee -- "clean rooms" where U.S. athletes can hang out, and high-tech masks with charcoal inserts that can be changed as with a fish tank filter.

"They're weird-looking," Mr. Friedman said of the masks. "I'll wear it at all times, normally, when I'm not racing."

He, like Mr. Sell, doesn't expect conditions in Beijing to alter his approach to the Games.

"I think there's a stress level there sometimes that's worse than actual conditions," Mr. Friedman said. "Everybody's going to be hindered the same. You just race."

These are, after all, the Olympics.