I have just spent nine days with 28,000 young people, and it has been a blast.
By "young" I'm not talking about their biological age - the oldest was 101 - I'm talking about their outlook.
The one thing the World Masters Games participants had in common was a youthful attitude, a vitality that drives them to stay fit, healthy and active well into old age.
They came to NSW from 95 countries, and all parts of Australia.
I think we are all the better for having them, and not just because they gave us an estimated $50 million economic boost.
The Masters Games attracted one or two carpers, but I think they entirely missed the point.
One critic complained the athletes grabbed far more column inches than they deserved, winning more media space than non-Masters who could perform much better.
This strikes me as a criticism of the media, not the Masters.
This critic said the Masters deserved a few paragraphs in a suburban newspaper, though curiously took almost a full page in a big city newspaper to vent the gripe.
Don't get the idea this was the Geriatric Olympics, because it wasn't.
More than 200 of the competitors were Olympians, and many were former world champions.
But to view the event as sport pure and simple is, I think, to misunderstand it.
It's a mix of sport and human interest.
It's a chance for weekend warriors to share the stage with the elite, or the former elite, to experience a taste of what the big time must be like.
That's another criticism of the Masters - that it's not fair when swimmers like Daniel Kowalski or Chris Fydler enter because then everyone else has no chance.
I beg to differ.
I think getting the chance to compete against the elite is the stuff of tales for grandchildren, present or future.
One of my squash training partners, for example, made it to the over 40s women's final against Sarah Fitz-Gerald, the five-times former world champion.
She duly lost in straight games, but said merely stepping onto the court with such a great player was a privilege.
It's true some competitors were so old they had no competition. Ruth Frith, for example, the 100-year-old great-grandmother from Brisbane who grabbed more than her share of the spotlight. She only had to turn up to win six gold medals in her throwing events, but she holds age world records in all of them - and it's not her fault if she's the only one fit and interested enough to enter.
She deserves a medal just for getting there.
I can understand those less enamoured of the Games who wonder why so much attention is paid to so many elderly people performing to such a mediocre standard.
But I suggest the answer is the same as for those offended by violence or smut on TV - turn it off, or turn away.
I can't understand why anyone would want to pan an event which, at the very least, brings thousands of people together for harmless fun.
It must also surely help keep them out of the doctors' rooms and hospital wards. How can you be so miserable as to deride them for that? Youth might well be wasted on the young. But lightness of spirit seems wasted on the old-before-their-time.
Doug Conway is a well-known Australian journalist who one day hopes to overcome his fear of dentists.
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