DO you remember how we once bid to host the Olympic Games? Democracy had barely dawned in South Africa and there we were, all fired up and ready to take on the world.
Can you believe it was 12 years ago that the name pulled out of the hat as Olympic hosts for 2004 was Athens and not Cape Town.
How disappointed we were after a fraught process in which Pick n Pay boss Raymond Ackerman set the ball rolling with his Cape Town bid, then fell out with SA Olympic chief Sam Ramsamy, and finally Chris Ball, "the ANC's banker", took over as bid chief as the normal politicking and backstabbing continued.
Could we have hosted an Olympic Games five years ago? A lot of people say it is just as well we didn't win that bid, but, then again, if the world commands that you deliver, you have to find ways to do so.
Is that not the case for 2010 when South Africa must deliver the next Fifa World Cup? If you're handed the ticket, you've got to take the ride.
How different would SA be today had it staged the Olympic Games in 2004? For a start, it's just possible we wouldn't have been left with enough money to bid for a World Cup.
So maybe things come around as they should and maybe we were just a little over-ambitious in our initial surge to make a big impact on a world we had rejoined. At least a successful World Cup next year will finally prove our capabilities and might then open the door for a second crack at the Olympics.
There has been talk already of bidding for the Games of 2020. Durban, for one, with its magnificent new stadium and extended multi-sport precinct plan, could be a most popular venue. Cape Town, no doubt, would also like to bid again, but South Africa cannot afford to have more than one city bidding at a time.
It's bad enough how much money an Olympic Games sets you back, but simply bidding for one costs an arm and a leg.
Incidentally, did you know how obsessive Nazi Germany was to host the 1936 Olympics? Not only did Berlin bid, and win, but so too did Cologne, Frankfurt and Nuremberg.
Tonight, of course, in Copenhagen, large parts of the world will hold their breath when the IOC announce the winner of the bid for the 2016 Olympics. These were the Games that South Africa had originally targeted, particularly after IOC president Jacques Rogge had urged African nations to apply, but we clearly pulled back to give the 2010 World Cup a clear run.
No African city can win tonight.