Our profiles today of several Olympic athletes remind me of something we don’t always make space for in our lives: a sense of awe.

The Olympics can be clouded by any number of factors, including cities’ disinterest in hosting, big money, even frustrating and sometimes excessively gooey TV coverage (in the United States, anyway). But then there’s the outsize display of other things: the skill, tenacity, persistence, resilience, and sportsmanship of athletes we’ll first meet Friday at the opening ceremony in Paris. Few of them will make it to the podium. But many will offer us a moment to embrace a delight-filled wonder at what is possible.