Just about everybody in the world knows it is happening, but exactly what is it?

As we stand on the edge of the next millennium, it might be time to question in what direction the modern Olympics are headed.

For the last decade, the International Olympic Committee has been swept up in an ever-accelerating tornado of scandal, corruption and commercialism. The five-ring Olympic logo was designed to represent the five continents of the world; at least one of their colors - blue, yellow, black, green and red - is contained on the flag of every country at the Games.

The Games are meant to embody global harmony and world peace, equality as well as sporting and moral excellence. But increasingly, the dominant symbols of the Olympics have become less savory.

The five rings could easily stand for money, power, privilege, drugs and unaccountability. Critics complain that commercialism riddles the Olympics.

In an effective admission of this, IOC member Dick Pound has declared: "Take away sponsorship and commercialism from sport today and what is left? A large, sophisticated, finely tuned engine developed over a period of 100 years -- with no fuel."

Certainly, the IOC was in financial strife before the Los Angeles Games in 1984 turned a profit. But has it gone too far?

By the IOC's own admission, the Games are perhaps the world's largest marketing program. They will generate $2.6 billion related to Sydney 2000 -- dwarfing the budgets of some nations at the Games.

More than $1.3 billion has been spent on television rights, the lion's share swallowed by the United States and Japan tearing off a $114 million chunk.

The figures are swelling. The IOC will give about $1.1 billion of the loot to the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, $300 million more than it gave to Atlanta. Some $400 million was split among national Olympic committees from 1997 to 2000, a 44 percent jump on the previous four years.

Money was still the focus hours before the Games opened Friday. Asked what he hoped the Games would do for Australia, Prime Minister John Howard on Friday said the Games would boost the nation's tourist trade.

The Olympic Superstore at Sydney Olympic Park stood ready to process 22,500 items a day.

Sydney was crowing that its Games had surpassed the Barcelona Games to set a new record for ticket sales: 5.25 million tickets, more than 82.3 percent of the total. But A-class tickets to the opening ceremony were on sale at A$1,382, four times the average annual income of a worker in Cambodia, and beyond the budget of most Australians too.

In the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, sporting heroes such as Jesse Owens are honored, but pride of place in the museum foyer goes to dozens of heroes of another kind: NBC, Cola Cola and fellow multinational firms that paid $1 million apiece to have their names chiseled in granite, highlighted in gold leaf.

How inclusive can the Olympics be if the Games continue to have more dollars than sense?