It's a pity for the 24 Americans being detained on Hainan island in China that their little contretemps with the Chinese air force didn't take place a month ago, before the International Olympic Committee inspectors paid a visit to Beijing to check on its bid for the 2008 Games.

Because if it had, you can be guaranteed the 24 U.S. servicepeople would be jetting back to the States sipping a glass of champagne in Club Class before you could say "hostage crisis."

Keeping politics out of sport is a wonderful idea, but it just won't fly, so to speak.

Indeed, CNN has already reported that the United States is looking at applying pressure to make sure the Chinese don't get the 2008 Olympic Games. And they may be able to do it.

The question is, of course, would it be right?

Those of us who aren't too young (or too old) can remember the boycotts of 1980 and 1984. The United States and other countries refused to compete in Moscow in 1980 as a protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The boycott was so severe a Scotsman (Allan Wells) won the 100 meters.

The Soviets and their allies naturally retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, although in retrospect it seems most Eastern Bloc athletes were doped to the eyeballs, so perhaps it wasn't such a great loss after all.

Well, that's a Western cynic's view, but the reality is the only people hurt by the boycotts were the athletes, who had trained for their moment of glory and who were unlikely to get a second chance. And it wasn't the athletes who boycotted the Games; it was the governments.

And as we all know -- at least by looking at the Japanese model -- governments suck.

Of course, it's not just in the Olympics that boycotts take place. Most Arab nations avoid having sporting contacts with Israel. Israel is placed in Europe for World Cup soccer qualification matches because no other Asian Middle Eastern country wants to play it. Palestine, which effectively occupies the same bit of land, plays in Asian qualifying (and is doing very well, I might add). Also in the Middle East, Kuwait refuses to have sporting contacts with Iraq due to the latter's invasion of the former 10 years ago.

South Africa, of course, was thrown out of the world sporting arena for many years because of its apartheid policies.

But is it right?

Few would disagree with the ban on South African, at least, on the surface. But it was still a political decision and there is the argument that maintaining contacts -- with as much integrity as possible -- could have helped break down barriers rather than have reinforced them.

Perhaps touring South Africa with colored players and beating white teams would have made a small impact. There again, touring South Africa with colored players and losing to white teams would have given strength to the regime in South Africa. South Africa actually shot itself in the foot when it banned the English cricket team from bringing South African-born, colored player Basil D'Oliveira in the '60s.

South Africa obviously crossed the line, but where is that line drawn?

In South Africa's case, the policies of the government affected all walks of life, particularly sport. The rest of Africa produced some fantastic black athletes during the apartheid years (Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino), but the black South Africans never had a chance. So there was a clearcut case for a sporting boycott.

But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was basically a military operation that had nothing to do with sport. Obviously, it affected the Afghans and their sporting heroes (er, sorry, can't name any at the moment), but other than that, there was little to trouble the sports world.

So why the boycott? Simple, the Olympics is such a huge and prestigious event that the American government realized it was the best way to score political points over its archenemy. It was, in retrospect, entirely wrong and led to Eastern Europe's spiteful retaliation in 1984.

And if we don't boycott?

Well, Adolf Hitler thought the 1936 Olympics in Berlin would be proof positive of the superiority of the Aryan race. Jesse Owens -- a black American athlete -- won four track and field medals to lay that little theory to rest and completely humiliate Hitler.

But perhaps there is a bigger point here. The significance of 1936 was not really that black athletes can do better than white athletes, it was the fact that the Olympic movement was prepared to hold the Games in an atmosphere of such tyranny.

Which takes us back to China. It's already lost one Games (2000) because of its repressive policies (using tanks to run over student protesters); now it may lose another.

Some say that if China gets the Games, it may lead to change and better human rights. That doesn't seem very realistic.

As the IOC ponders the venue for 2008, can it ignore China trampling on the rights of its own people (e.g., the crushing of protests at Tiananmen Square, the suppression of Falun Gong, the dislocation of locals to make way for Olympic venues) as well as its aggression against others (the occupation of Tibet, firing missiles near Taiwan, blaming the U.S. for the air incident when the U.S. plane was apparently flying on autopilot in international airspace)?

Hell, China's even strong-armed the IOC into calling Taiwan Chinese Taipei in the belief that it will make Taiwan appear more Chinese and less independent (how many people do you know who think Taiwan is not an independent country?).

IOC vice president is in no doubt as to what must be considered.

"I always, always have human rights as a part of my calculus for every city vying to host the Olympic Games," she declared Tuesday. "Every city. Always."

The answer to all the above, of course, is that the IOC, while trying to keep politics out of sport, has to take everything into account and come up with an answer that serves the Olympic ideal best.

Of course, with the IOC having almost less integrity than the Chinese government, there's little chance of that happening anyway.