WHEN senior members of the International Olympic Committee sat down with the Beijing Olympics organisers in 2003 to discuss issues that might arise in the months ahead of this year's Games, Tibet was one of a long list of potential controversies.

While the exact nature of the violent anti-government riots in Tibet during the past week may not have been predicted, Olympics organisers have been bracing for the possibility of sensitive issues coming to a head before the August 8 opening ceremony. These include relations with Taiwan and issues of human rights and media freedoms.

"In the lead-up to any Games, we review potential sensitive issues and Tibet was one," says Australia's senior IOC member Kevan Gosper, who is also vice-chairman of the IOC's co-ordination commission for the Games and head of the press commission.

"We have not been taken by surprise," he says. "But the IOC does share the world's desire for the Chinese to bring a peaceful situation in Tibet as soon as possible."

How the Chinese authorities handle the protests in Tibet will be watched closely by the rest of the world in the light of the approaching Olympics that will see more than 23,000 members of the world's media descend on the Chinese capital, along with 15,000 of the world's top athletes and sporting officials and a host of VIPs, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Used to handling dissent with strong action and strict media controls, the Chinese leaders will be tested during the next few months as they make final preparations for the Games.

The Chinese Government was furious when Hollywood director Steven Spielberg announced recently that he was ending his consultancy on the Games' ceremonies because he believed China was not doing enough to end the civil war in Darfur in Sudan, where it has major investments.

China's anger at the events in Tibet during the past week has been incandescent. But after years of positive press about the Beijing Games, the pressures of dissent are only just beginning to hit the Chinese leaders.

The mild-mannered Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this week accused the Dalai Lama of instigating riots, as the violence spread from the streets of the capital Lhasa to neighbouring provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu.

"The recent riots in Lhasa and other parts of the country were aimed at undermining the upcoming Beijing Olympics," Wen said at the close of the annual National People's Congress meeting this week. Wen said there was "ample fact and plenty of evidence proving that this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique", which he also accused of trying to "stage such appalling incidents in Lhasa and similar incidents in other parts of China and also trying to organise mobs to storm Chinese diplomatic missions overseas".

But the Olympic movement, which is rarely scrutinised except around Games' time, has survived many a controversy or outrage on the way to an opening ceremony.

These have included the killings of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972, the African boycott of the 1976 Games in Montreal, the Western boycotts of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the eastern bloc boycotts of the Los Angeles Games in 1984, fears of North Korean-backed sabotage of the 1988 Games in Seoul, concerns about Basque separatist activity in the 1992 Games in Barcelona, a bombing in a park in Atlanta in 1996, the IOC corruption scandal in the lead-up to the Sydney Games and fears of a potential terrorist attack in Athens in 2004.

Staging an Olympic Games, while a huge international accolade, has never come without a price, not only financially but in intense international public scrutiny that becomes more intense as the Olympic flame approaches the cauldron of the main stadium.

But the rise of China on the world stage and the sensitivities over its policies, including Tibet, meant the 2008 Games would be open to hypercharged political issues.

Potential boycotts have been raised - although it is noticeable that the Dalai Lama said this week that he felt the Games should go ahead in the world's most populous country, acknowledging the fierce pride of the Chinese people in being able to host the event.

In Taiwan, the frontrunner in the presidential campaign, Kuomintang leader Ma Ying-jeou, has already used the Games to stir local passions, saying that if he wins today's election, he could bar athletes from the Olympics should the Tibet saga deepen.

"If Chinese authorities continue to crack down on Tibet and the Tibet situation worsens, and if I'm elected as the next president, I would not rule out not sending delegates to Beijing to participate in the 2008 Olympics," he said.

Ma's opponent, Frank Hsieh of the ruling Democrat Progressive Party, also played up the Tibetan issue, saying Taiwan could suffer a similar fate if it were reunited with China.

(Taiwan's continued participation in the Games since China returned to the Olympics in 1984 is an example of the unique, complex diplomacy the IOC has managed to effect to ensure the survival of the modern Olympics.)

The heat will be turned up from Monday when the Olympic flame will be lit in the ancient Greek city of Olympia, at the beginning of a six-week journey through Greece and 19 other countries before it begins its route through China.

The torch will spend the next week in Greece before arriving in Beijing on March 31 and then going on to Almaty in Kazakhstan, Istanbul, St Petersburg, London, Paris, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Dar es Salaam, Muscat, Islamabad, New Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Canberra (April 24), Nagano, Seoul, Pyongyang and Ho Chi Minh City before moving on to Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.

While China has been determined to make this year's Olympic torch relay the biggest and best, the IOC has always been concerned that a long relay outside of China's borders would be open to protesters. While the theme for the torch relay is Light the Passion, Share the Dream, the ignition of the Tibet issue will ensure that there will be passions aplenty along the route, which will give security forces in the cities some giant headaches.

Gosper, who won a silver medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne and competed in the 1960 Games in Rome, says the IOC knows there are risks with a global torch relay. "We have always understood that this torch relay is vulnerable," he says. "We rely on the local authorities in each of the cities through which it passes to ensure the appropriate security."

Gosper is appealing to potential protesters to respect the torch as a sign of international friendship. "This is an Olympic torch. It is not Beijing's torch," he says. "The torch stands for all the Olympic values of harmony and peace and goodwill. We would ask people to respect this and to desist trying to take advantage of the Olympics to promote their own particular agendas or concerns."

As an Olympics approaches, everyone, it seems, becomes an expert, offering their opinions about the host country.

But the IOC survives by focusing on staging a sporting event only, scrupulously avoiding domestic political issues in host countries.

The IOC prides itself on the fact that staging an Olympics can transform the image of a city or a country. The Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 was an important element in Japan's postwar re-emergence; the Seoul Games were a symbol of the stability and rising economy of South Korea; the 2000 Games were a major boost for Australia's international self-confidence and the 2008 Games are a key part of China's rise as a world power.

But by awarding the Games to a city seven years ahead of an opening ceremony, the IOC aims to put in place a foundation to ensure the successful, peaceful staging of the event.

"The public doesn't seem to understand that if you are running the Olympics you do not have the capacity to control the politics of a sovereign country," Gosper says. "There is a false impression in the public at large that a sporting organisation like the IOC has a decree over the political and social agendas of a country. But that is simply not a fact."

That said, once Games' time approaches and the Olympic family comes to town, the situation changes. Beijing organisers, for example, have given their word that the international media will be able to go about their business, reporting the Games with the same freedoms as they would in any other country. This will make life interesting if any groups decide to stage protests in Beijing during the Games.

The assurance by the Chinese allegedly includes free access to the internet, which Chinese authorities regularly monitor and block using sophisticated firewalls.

Such censorship occurred this week when access to internationally broadcast footage of the riots in Tibet was blocked.

As head of the IOC press commission, Gosper will have his work cut out ensuring the Chinese deliver on their promises.

"We are confident the legislative changes in China (regarding the rights of foreign journalists) and the Chinese commitment to their host city agreement will ensure that the internet is free and open to the international press during Games time," he says.

Talk of boycotts is nothing new to the Olympic movement. Gosper and other senior members of the Australian Olympic community still bear the scars of the bitter debate in 1980 when prime minister Malcolm Fraser exerted pressure on the then Australian Olympic Federation to boycott the Moscow Games following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Swimmer Lisa Forrest has published a book about the experience, Boycott: The story behind Australia's controversial involvement in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Athletes such as Forrest and distance runner Chris Wardlaw were subject to tremendous pressure to fall in line with Fraser's call to boycott the Games.

Some, such as sprinter Raelene Boyle, buckled and cost themselves potential medals. Despite massive pressure from Fraser, the AOF voted by six to five to defy him and go to the Games, allowing Australia to boast that it has attended every Olympic Games since the revival of the modern Olympics in 1896, a factor it used in selling itself to the IOC in 1993 to win the right to host the 2000 Games.

As Forrest notes in her book, it was not until the 2000 Games in Sydney that many of the wounds from the 1980 vote within elements of the Australian Olympic sporting fraternity began to heal.

Gosper, who voted not to go to Moscow under pressure from Fraser, acknowledged he made the wrong call in his book, An Olympic Life, written with this writer and published in 2000. Fraser himself acknowledged this week that Olympic boycotts did not work and that his attempts to get Australian officials to boycott the Moscow Games were misguided.

Fraser defended himself by saying that his policy was more a matter of falling into line with the policy argued by then US president Jimmy Carter.

Fraser was quoted by The Age as saying, "The individual choices that were made created divisions within sports and between sports. It's not something I would want to see repeated. If I had the chance to argue the policy before, I would have said (to the US), 'We support you in a lot of things, but for heaven's sake don't do this."'

The next few months could prove one of the strongest tests yet of the present generation of Chinese leaders in handling dissent in the modern world at a time when its legendary controls over the media will not work. Staging the Games will change China. Exactly how is still unfolding.