Twenty-six communities in Colorado are sending 52 athletes to the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.

Including JaVale McGee.

I saw his mom, Pamela McGee, play for the USA’s women’s basketball team at the 1984 Summer Games. They could become the first mother-son to win gold medals in Olympic hoops. The Nuggets’ McGee was just added to Team USA.

The other 51 from Longmont to Durango to Crested Butte to Niwot, from Littleton and Lakewood, from Bailey, Buena Vista, Broomfield and Boulder, from Fountain and Fairplay, from Arvada and Aurora, from Edwards and Evergreen, from Louisville to Golden (how appropriate), and Denver with seven and Colorado Springs with 17. Colorado is third behind California and Florida in Olympic representation.

Let’s hope a majority of our state’s athletes earn a medal, especially because after they had to wait an extra year to participate in the Olympics and will have to compete mostly without spectators.

Temperatures in Japan next week will be in the 90s, and the Olympics already are a hot mess.

Almost 100 members of teams from around the world have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 50 are in quarantine. A majority of Japanese citizens and medical experts wanted an Olympics cancellation.

The Organizing Committee has experienced a string of scandals over the past two years, forcing the head of the committee to resign and, this week, firing the director of the opening ceremony Friday night. Also, the composer whose music was to be a focus during the ceremony was forced to resign.

No fans will attend the opening gala and walk of the 11,000 athletes from 200 countries who will contend in 41 sports.

Colorado Olympians and Paralympians will vie in marathon, triathlon, heptathlon, pentathlon, track and field, judo, gymnastics, cycling, wrestling, boxing, canoe, rowing, archery, taekwondo, rugby, volleyball, soccer, swimming, sports climbing and shooting.

There are 52 special stories of the women and men athletes who were born in this state, attended colleges in Colorado, work and train here, and/or moved here from others states and countries — all of whom officially declare they are Coloradans.

Colorado Springs calls itself Olympic City USA, particularly because it is the home to the United States Olympic and Paralympic headquarters and the training center, and is site of the Olympic and Paralympic Museum and hall of fame.

Colorado also should be the Olympics State because athletes from this paradise dominate the Winter Olympics, and thousands have prepared for the Summer Olympics at altitude and in the Springs, and remained here permanently. Including Olympic champions from skier Mikaela Shiffrin to swimmers Amy Van Dyken and Missy Franklin to wrestler Rulon Gardner to figure skaters Scott Hamilton and Dorothy Hamill and legendary Eddie Eagan, who was born in Denver and became the only athlete to win gold medals at the Summer and Winter games in boxing (1920) and bobsled (1932).

As someone who has covered 12 Olympics, it has been one of my most memorable pleasures to watch Coloradans (Joe Sakic) to Coloradans-to-be (Peter Forsberg) win medals in foreign countries and the U.S. The Olympics did not make it to Colorado in 1976.

From The Dream Team in Spain to Gardner’s miraculous upset in Australia to the USA’s women’s gymnastics team in Atlanta to Van Dyken’s amazing accomplishments in Atlanta to Hamilton’s gold medal performance in the former Yugoslavia to the USA men’s gymnastics team in Los Angeles. I always remember riding in the Goodyear Blimp over the alpine events in Norway, viewing the track and field on a black-and-white TV in a bar in the Australian Outback and sitting on a castle wall in France drinking wine while overlooking the stadium during the closing ceremony.

I will not be in Japan this time. Other than the athletes, coaches, staff and some broadcasters and journalists, Americans will watch the Olympics, then the Paralympics, on NBC and associate networks.

We will see, in the wide world of sports, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, and exceptional Colorado athletes in their teens, 20s and 30s — and Hillary Bor, who was born in Kenya and immigrated to this country, eventually became a citizen and joined the U.S. Army. In June at the trials he won the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

The sergeant from Fort Carson is one of Colorado’s 52 world-class competitors at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Light the flame.