The journalist from Buenos Aires, Argentina, had covered every Olympics since 1924 in Paris.

So, at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, I sat with him on a park bench and asked about his most vivid memory of the “Chariots of Fire’’ events. He spoke to the translator for several minutes, and she said: “He told me he doesn’t remember anything from then.’’

“Understandable. What about Berlin with Jesse Owens winning four track-and-field gold medals in front of Adolph Hitler?” I asked.

“No recollections,’’ she said.

“London Olympics in ’48 after the war?” I asked.

He talked for a while, and the translation was one word: “Nothing.’’

“Uh, Squaw Valley in 1960 as the U.S. hockey team upset Russia?”

“Nada,’’ he replied.

Mexico, Munich, Montreal?

He just shook his head.

“Well, give us your reminisces of any Olympics.’’

Ah, he smiled and chatted for a while. The translator seemed interested: “He got sick in Seoul in 1988, and he remembers the American ‘Dream Team’ playing basketball.’’

“That was last night.’’

Exasperated, then wondering and worrying that perhaps some distant day, I, too, would forget my memorable, monumental moments of the Olympics.

I will be 78 Thursday.

One hundred years after the 1924 “Chariot’’ Games, the Olympics begins again in Paris in exactly one month.

A funny thing happened on the way to my first Olympics in 1980. I never got there. President Jimmy Carter ordered that the United States boycott the games in the Soviet Union.

But, I do recall Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in ’84. Scott Hamilton, who overcame a childhood disease that stunted his growth (and later was diagnosed as a congenital brain tumor), won the gold medal in men’s ice skating. He moved to Colorado Springs in ’76 to train at The Broadmoor. When the award ceremony was held, Americans, I included, and Hamilton shed tears. By accident, Scott and I were seatmates on the plane trip home from the Olympics and talked most of the way.

In what turned eventually into a war zone that destroyed the country I had become friends with the security guard with the machine gun outside my apartment entrance. I gave him M&Ms every day.

I remember the American “Dream Team” playing basketball in Barcelona in ’92. I watched them practice before the Olympics in Monte Carlo and hung out playing blackjack and drinking beers with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. In the first game NBA stars ever played in the Games, against Angola, Team USA went on a 46-1 streak and ended up winning 116-48, then easily took the gold by coasting past Croatia by 32 points.

Lillehammer, Norway, was my favorite Winter Olympics, and Sydney, Australia, the best of the Summer Games. In Norway, I mostly covered Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, the primary Olympic story, and persuaded the Goodyear blimp pilot to float us over the skiing spectaculars for an entire day. In Australia I wanted to see kangaroos in the Outback, so I took two flights 600 miles to Broken Hill, rented a car, viewed the Olympics in a nowhere bar on a 14-inch black-and-white TV, and was surrounded at sundown by hundreds of kangaroos.

I was among the few journalists who witnessed the unbelievable historic goal medal achieved by Wyoming’s and Colorado Springs’ Rulon Gardner, who defeated three-time Olympian champion Aleksandr Karelin, “The Russian Bear,” in Greco-Roman wrestling — the “Miracle on the Mat.’’

In Nagano, Japan, I was walking down a snowy street when someone shouted: “Hey, Woody.’’ Shocked, I saw Avalanche all-time great Joe Sakic. It was the first time NHL players participated in the Olympics; Sakic injured his knee the next game, and the Canadian team finished fourth. After being eliminated early, the U.S. hockey pros trashed their rooms in the Olympic village. Fellow columnist Mark Kiszla and I shared an apartment and eels and squid he brought back from the grocery.

Salt Lake City, I’ve tried to forget. The head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints condemned me to hell from the pulpit. A French skating judge and I received death threats. While I was attending an Olympics party in downtown Atlanta, a bomb exploded a block away.

And in Greece at the 25th modern Olympics 24 years ago, I sat mesmerized on a hill in Olympia during the shotput competition for men and women (their first) on the site of the ancient Games in 776 B.C.

I remember Carl Lewis as the gold medalist in the 100-meter dash in Los Angeles, but I don’t remember Koroibus, who won the first Olympic race.