I think the organizer for the Salt Lake City Olympic games said it best in his closing ceremony address when he said, “We did it.” As the world reflects on more than two weeks of Olympic highs and lows, scandals and triumphs, one glaring fact cannot be overlooked: Salt Lake City, and indeed the United States, put on one of the safest and most successful Winter Olympics in recent memory. What’s more, they put these games on amid a world climate that threatened to suffocate the Olympic spirit.

Watch out, I’m gonna get sappy here.

Pre-game talk centered almost exclusively around the issue on everyone’s mind: security. The Olympics were the most public, globally reaching and widely watched event of its kind. They were and still are thought generally to represent all that’s good and peaceful about the world. In other words, they presented one of the most attractive venues for terrorists in years. And everyone knew it.

But something almost magical happened when the “Miracle on Ice” team lit the torch to signify the status of the games. Everyone’s fears subsided, and the spirit of the Olympics and sportsmanship won out. Sure there was the odd NBC feature on security measures, and there was no doubt security remained an important issue at this year’s games – but it wasn’t the main issue. We were able to forget about global security and concentrate on “more important” things.

We could stand up and be proud that America was winning more medals, 34, than we had ever won at the Winter Olympics, far surpassing our original goal of 20. Sure, the majority of those medals came from events that we made up so that we could win them, like Freestyle Moguls and “Hashpipe” snowboarding, but that didn’t matter. We were winning, damn it!

Instead of worrying about an imminent terrorist attack, we could worry about the fate of the poor, spited Canadian figure skaters. Debates swirled about judging scandals, whether figure skating was a real sport (it’s not), or whether Canada was a real country (also not), instead of who was to be blamed for the latest atrocities, or whether a war on terrorism was warranted.

We could rally as a nation, not bound by fear or vengeance, but bound by our cheering for a hockey team that brought us to our feet again. We were united against the “evil Russians” not because they represented a threat to our national security, but because they represented a threat to our medal hopes. We sat glued to our TVs, not waiting for the next bit of news from MSNBC, but waiting for the next goal to be scored in the gold medal game against Canada.

For the first time in a long while, the victories scored by the world’s elite athletes seemed to overshadow those scored by the world’s elite fighting forces. Even hardened cynics like me had to step back and take notice something special was happening.

Not that anyone could forget that military personnel were working night and day in Salt Lake City and abroad to ensure everyone’s safety. We almost felt that they were fighting to give us the right to forget, if just for a little while. And for that, everyone that worked to make Salt Lake City the pleasant distraction that it was deserves the last gold of the games. See, I told you I was going to get sappy.