I would love to tell you about competing in the Olympics. Of course, you would take one look at my too short and too round stature and know I was pulling your leg. However, I can tell you about being at the Olympics and it was everything I ever dreamed and more.

In the early 1970s, I did some consulting for a sports nut and in our private time together we talked a lot about sports. He had been a wrestler at the University of Illinois and never lost his enthusiasm for the sport.

In late June of 1976, I received a phone call from my sports-enthusiast friend asking me if I would like to go to the Montreal Olympics with a group he was taking. A house and two automobiles had been rented close to the Olympics venue and a full slate of tickets to a variety of events had been purchased. All were to fly to Montreal in his private jet. Does that sound like a deal or what? I had a new job with some new obligations that summer and July/August is never a great time for a school administrator to take two weeks off. But I just couldn’t turn down such an opportunity so we moved heaven and earth to make it happen.

Well, everything does not always come out as planned.

In the end, six of the eight people who had planned to go had to cancel, including my friend. Only one other person and myself ended up making the trip. We sublet one of the houses, cancelled the rental on one of the cars, and carried enough Olympic tickets to Montreal to see anything and everything four times over.

That was the year of Sugar Ray Leonard and the Spinks brothers in the ring, Nadia Comenche in gymnastics, Dwight Stone and Edwin Moses in track and field, and Bruce Jenner in the decathlon. For a lifetime sports guy, this was heaven on earth.

I ran from event to event, barely eating or sleeping, trying not to miss anything. Our men’s basketball team won behind Phil Ford and Walter Davis while the women’s team placed second. It was a great time to be in Montreal.

The end result of the two weeks was that we traded or sold enough of the excess tickets to pay for the house, the car, the plane tickets and were able to return a bundle of money to our benefactor at the end of the venture. I should add that “a good time was had by all.”

Well, all two of us anyway.

All I could do was count my blessings and say “thank you.”

Anderson resident Mark Hopkins is the former president of three colleges, including what was then Anderson College. He is a consultant in international higher education.