Not one potbellied ex-jock in Ohio, living in Mom and Dad’s basement, spending two hours on hold for a 14-second riff on Jim Rome or Dan Patrick’s dime, could find Farmington or Greenwood without a GPS.

Ask the same unscientific sample group to identify the rules of the 20-kilometer racewalk or the 3,000-meter steeplechase, and you’ll be welcomed with vacant, drooling stares.

‘Tis the beauty of the Summer Olympics in a nutshell.

For 350 days every presidential election year, America’s sports-obsessed tunnel vision is focused on Kevin Youkilis’ OBP or Kobe Bryant’s PPG. But we take a two-week siesta from the silliness and focus, mercifully, on Anna Willard’s PR or the talents of Capt. Kevin Eastler, Buckley AFB.

True, it’s probably part jingoism, part boredom. The Divine Right Theory/Manifest Destiny/Flat Earth Society gang still exists. And there’s only so much preseason football police blotter material and pre-U.S. Open tennis we can tolerate between dog-day pitching changes.

Whatever the motivation, our heart is in the right place, whether that place is Atlanta, Sydney, Athens or Beijing. Our minds should be so wise as to follow that thumping beat in odd-numbered years or random weekends in the spring and fall.

We allow the world to get smaller and our attention span to swell in proportion with our pride.

The Olympics seem so outdated, so overblown, when men in suits are bidding obscene Monopoly money for the right to host the Games in 2024. Then the first angel-faced gymnast or cancer-surviving wrestler grabs us by the goose-fleshed hair on the back of our neck and refuses to let go.

Incentive to watch seems so unnecessary, but our rocky, rain-soaked little corner of the blue marble has two titanic reasons to hold head and shoulders high.

Telstar Regional High School graduate Willard and Mt. Blue High School product Eastler have been American record-holders in their unheralded track and field disciplines.

They lived, learned, laughed, cried, worked, worshipped and dreamed right here in the tri-county hinterland. Our unique blend of elements and natural resources lit their individual Olympic torches. Now, they carry a piece of us with them as they wear our stars and stripes on the other side of the International Date Line.

We’re taken with teams, with logos, with brand names. We’re smitten with solo athletes only if they’re so transcendent or quirky as to be identifiable without a last name: Tiger. Lance. Muhammad. Iron Mike.

Tiny, isolated, financially battered Maine isn’t conducive to birthing team-sport superstars. There isn’t enough world-class opposition to sharpen those skills at a young enough age.

The top one-thousandth percentile get signed to a professional baseball contract or a Division I basketball scholarship. Then, most disturbingly, we begin sneering and waiting for the shoe of supposed failure to drop. Feeding the inferiority complex that is our geographic birthright, perhaps.

These next three weeks are a fabulous time to suppress those feelings. It’s a magical time to be a sports fan and a Mainer.

Sports need a bigger tent every fourth August. The games people play that involve only a squeaky pair of shoes and a voice in one person’s head become larger than life.

Most Olympic medals are doled out in athletic endeavors that translate better to Franklin County than Orange County. Hundreds of no-stoplight communities across the fruited plain share the wealth as collective sports capital of the world for a day or two.

We get the privilege of saying that our Junior Olympic track program, our National Honor Society, our newspaper knew them when.

Time to put our fair-weather support of reticent multi-millionaires on hold and lock our eyes and remote controls on two champions of our own.

Anna Willard and Kevin Eastler already are winners, a thousand times over.

Those of us who win vicariously through athletes with far less spirit and willpower would do well to live this dream with them, via satellite.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].