The International Olympic Committee earned plenty of scorn — deserved, I think — for its refusal in London this summer to commemorate the 11 Israeli athletes slain during the 1972 Munich Games, not least of all from some of the widows.

Political sensitivities obviously informed that decision, and persistent claims of West German appeasement of Palestinian terrorist interests have grown as a milestone anniversary approaches.

It was 40 years ago today that the athletes were taken captive in their quarters at the Olympic Village. Official ceremonies will be held today in the Munich suburb of Fürstenfeldbruck, at an airfield where the athletes were murdered in helicopters by Palestinian terrorists.

IOC boss Jacques Rogge will not be on hand for the observances, as he is recovering from hip replacement surgery. How convenient.

As much as the IOC may want the whole matter to pass into history, Munich simply cannot. It remains fresh, relevant and confounding. New documents released by the Israeli government last week expressed a high level of disgust that the West German government did little to save the lives of the athletes.

As Alexander Wolff wrote for Sports Illustrated 10 years ago, on the 30th anniversary, “to revisit the Munich attack is to go slack-jawed at the official lassitude and incompetence, and to realize how much has changed” regarding security for major events such as the Olympics.

These were first Olympics I recall watching as an 11-year-old, riveted that a whole new world of sports — the world, in fact — had been opened to me.

Then the real world, the ugly one concocted by cold-blooded international political assassins, intruded. The phrase “Black September” got mixed up with references to Olga Korbut, Mark Spitz and Frank Shorter.

The gold medal USA-USSR basketball game remains notorious in this country, and the image of Alexander Belov’s basket is still hard to shake. But nothing like the photos and television shots of a terrorist, his head fully covered in a ski mask, looking out from the balcony at the Olympic Village.

Also unforgettable will always be the utterly devastated look of ABC’s Jim McKay, as he corrected erroneous reports that the athletes were safe by looking at the camera and delivering the official news that they were not: “They’re all gone.”

I can’t exactly remember how I processed all this information, except that it was a profound sense of sadness that shattered my euphoria, roller coaster emotions that were hard to square.

Sports media journalist Ed Sherman, who is about my age, says the Munich Massacre “helped me to understand my identity as a Jew, and the grip that Israel has on Jewish people throughout the world.”

This was a time when people of my generation — the tail end of the Baby Boom — were coming of age. We were small children for most of the 1960s, but hit our teenage years as the Vietnam War was winding down and a burglary occurred at Democratic National Party headquarters.

The early 1970s were, for me, a vast blur, with my parents’ divorce at the heart of the chaos. Older Boomers had anti-war protests and Kennedy assassinations as their touchstone memories. In addition to family matters, mine were Munich and Watergate.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines has special programming about the Munich anniversary; if you’ve got an hour, the following documentary, featuring the family members of the slain athletes and ABC journalists reporting the tragedy, is well worth your time.

Since I can’t come up with anything terribly profound to say after Monday’s women’s Olympic soccer epic between the U.S. and Canada, I’ll link here this morning to those who were there and had the daunting duty of putting together words to describe it.

After last year’s comeback victory by the Americans over Brazil in the World Cup quarterfinals, I thought it would be hard to top such a feat. And so it happened at Old Trafford.

As I wrote after that match a year ago, and the World Cup, the Americans’ entertainment factor transcended the fact that they’re female athletes playing soccer. This was pure sporting spectacle, and Thursday’s gold medal match against Japan at Wembley Stadium ought to be another magnificent treat.

Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated:

The U.S. women’s soccer team has a way of doing this to you: Making you think it’s over, that there’s no way these women could possibly find a way to rescue victory from defeat. It happened last year in the World Cup against Brazil, when they galvanized a nation by somehow scoring with a man down on a Hail Mary in extra time. And it happened again here at Old Trafford on Monday. All the U.S. did was come from behind three times in the second half, erasing an epic hat-trick performance by Canada’s Christine Sinclair.

Jeff Blair, Globe and Mail, Toronto:

“It’s a shame that in such an important and even game that the ref had such an impact on it,” said Sinclair. “We feel cheated. It’s a shame that in a game as important as that, the ref decided the result before it started.”

Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports

Wambach brushed off complaints about the ref as a loser’s lament and said it was in line with the relentless talking Canadian coach John Herdman did in the build-up to the game about how the Americans use “illegal tactics” such as setting picks on set plays.

Bruce Arthur, National Post (Canada)

Canada should remember this. The Olympics are stuffed with sports we care nothing about, and with athletes we only know every four years, but they’re packed with something else, too. They matter so much to the people competing that they get to us. And so when Simon Whitfield runs to gold in Sydney, we remember. When Joannie Rochette skates her heart out for bronze, we remember. We should remember this.

Michael Lewis, Newsday

If they gave out awards for Olympic drama queens, the U.S. women’s soccer team would get a gold medal.

Cathal Kelly, Toronto Star

We celebrate victories, but we also celebrate classics. If all those great Canadian triumphs we like to talk about — from ’72 onward — were celebrations, this team’s 4-3 loss at the Olympics was Lear on grass. It was Macbeth. It was a great tragedy. Emphasis on “great.”

The Olympics have just started, and I can’t wait for them to end.

That’s what I have thought over the years watching the Opening Ceremonies and first few days of the Games.

But not for the reason you may imagine.

I’ve always wanted the Olympics to hurry up and get over so Bud Greenspan could complete his amazing documentaries of the games. After covering the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics, I knew I was missing so much more of what was in my midst.

As I watched the festivities from London over the weekend, I remembered that these are the first Olympics since Greenspan died on Christmas Day 2010.

There’s been quite a hullabaloo over NBC’s insistence on “plausibly live” prime time coverage in the age of instant media. But who’s going to stop the clock hands and tell the stories, timelessly and methodically, to preserve them for the ages?

After two days of the Olympics, the events already have come and gone like a blur, crammed onto multimedia platforms and over-the-air snippets, many seen only fleetingly on an iPad application before something newer, fresher, more compelling comes along.

I admit to being addicted to the ease of watching what I want, when I want, and as it happens. But who’s going to sort through what transpires over the next two weeks, long after the Olympics are over, and help us see the Games in a whole new way?

We’re dearly missing the gifted storytelling of Bud Greenspan, who came in behind the Games to help us understand what happened, and to appreciate why these moments should never be forgotten.