Let the games begin.

The first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics goes to the free-speech protester who managed to crash the carefully staged lighting of the Olympic torch in Greece. The silver goes to the Tibetan woman covered in fake blood who briefly blocked the path of the torch relay before it had barely began.

Two other protesters get bronze medals, only because they didn't do much other than run around the field at Ancient Olympia and make some noise.

Is this going to be a great Olympics or what?

Records will surely be set long before the games officially open Aug. 8 in Beijing, though those keeping the official books will likely not recognize them. They would like to keep the fun and games contained on the athletic side, but the genie is already out of the bottle for this Olympics.

Tibet, Darfur, freedom of speech. They're all in play, and if yesterdays action at the torch lighting was any indication, the Chinese either better figure out a way to deal with differing political views — and quick — or risk having the games they so desperately wanted to celebrate the country as an athletic and economic power turned into a platform of a completely different kind.

The early indications aren't promising. Flexibility doesn't seem to be the country's strong point.

China has already blocked off routes from its side of Mount Everest this spring, fearful that Tibet activists may try to disrupt plans to carry the Olympic torch to the world's tallest peak. The same fears have prompted the country to ban live broadcasts during the Olympics from Tiananmen Square, where Chinese troops crushed pro-democracy protests nearly two decades ago.

But the Olympics are a worldwide phenomenon, and the protests that succeeded in Greece despite the presence of 1,000 police showed how little the Chinese can control things outside their own country. There are well-organized groups eager and ready to link these games with causes that include suffering in Darfur and the bloody Chinese crackdown in Tibet, and they're going to be hard to stop.

Imagine what's going to happen when the torch relay comes to San Francisco, its only North American stop, on April 9 and protesters get a chance to unleash their full fury. The city's mayor has already said no one will be prevented from demonstrating as the torch travels through the city, and city officials have even debated whether to use the event to criticize China's human rights record themselves.

The Olympics are five months away, and already they're a public relations nightmare. The Chinese thought they would stage the grandest games ever and the world would applaud, but a good portion of the world appears to be growing increasingly uneasy with the whole thing.

There were always issues with these Olympics, as there are with any Olympics. British officials wanted to muzzle their athletes during the games, the U.S. State Department warned anyone attending that they would likely be under surveillance, and the choking pollution in Beijing might keep some athletes away.

But now there are really big issues, and the Chinese aren't doing themselves any favors in clumsy and heavy-handed attempts to separate them from the field of play.

None are bigger than Darfur and Tibet, and Chinese officials have to be worried about what is to come after seeing what was supposed to be a glorious torch lighting ceremony overshadowed by demonstrators in Greece. Months of protests leading up to the Olympics will be bad enough, but what happens if protests break out during the games in Beijing and are put down violently?

At least one group has already announced its intentions to make a scene.

"We are planning some actions during the games themselves in Beijing," said Jill Savitt, executive director of Dream for Darfur. "We're not going to release the details of those yet for fear we wouldn't be able to pull off those events."

Indeed, the very Olympics that the Chinese want to use to show off their country will be used by activists to show things that may not be so pretty. Though there has been some idle talk about possible boycotts because of Tibet, both sides want these games to go ahead for reasons of their own.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said much the same thing yesterday in an interview with The Associated Press before the torch ceremony that went bad.

"Awarding the games to China has put China in the limelight and opened the issues up to the world," Rogge said. "Tibet, rightfully so, is on the front page. But it would not be on the front page if the games were not being organized in China."

The Chinese wanted these games badly, and they got them. They're spending untold billions to put on a spectacle for the world.

But they're finding out early that they can't always control what the world sees.