In a crystal-clear instant on a glorious sporting day in Noosaville, I knew.

In the pit of my stomach, through the taste of bile in my mouth poisoning the flat white I was sipping, I realised what the CIA should have a long time ago.

And that is the answer to what creates a terrorist … dispossession. Having something taken away from you that is elemental to your core being – something you religiously believe is your right.

Someone hand me a AK47 and point me at an Imperialist Dog.

As the strains of the Australian anthem wafted into earshot, I had the utter need for vengeance and it was all to do with my non-Olympics experience.

Startled by the rendition of Advance Australia Fair, I demanded to know what was going on, but already knew. A TV was on in a shop nearby and a man standing in the doorway confirmed the worst.

“Libby Trickett’s just taken gold in the 100m fly.”

I felt as in control of my situation as Guy Pearce in Memento, when he had to scrawl all over himself to remember what day it was.

Dazed, I stumbled into the store to see Libby waving to the world, medal around the neck. I went back to my coffee and told my wife: “This can’t be happening. NBC (the US Olympic broadcaster) is going to die for this. Somehow, somewhere, I’ll make them pay.”

The world was not right. If Russians tanks had rolled into my living room instead of Georgia, my Olympics could not be in more of a shambles thanks to – daytime swimming finals.

The Olympics had started like any other – the opening ceremony was suitably over-the-top, a marvellous waste of money. But then the American culture shock set in.

I got home on Saturday night from covering sport all day for the Daily, sat down to enjoy the Olympics swimming and was confronted by boring heats.

I knew this was going to happen – I was aware that the Americans TV broadcaster and their sponsors screamed blue murder until the IOC caved in and decided to turn night into day and the swimming into US prime time. But knowing it and sitting through it are two different things.

Sunday and Monday were my days off and I should have been free to sit limpet-like in front of the arvo swim finals – but I had kids to please, places to go and dues to pay on Monday.

On Sunday arvo a man at the park told me Grant Hackett had bombed in the 400m, while strangers were running out in the street screaming for joy at Stephanie Rice’s world record to win Australia’s first gold.

That’s when I started to fume. Like the Aussie men’s swim team, I felt badly out of touch. Monday I had things that just had to be done during the day, with scarce time to squeeze in a coffee ... culminating in the impotent rage detonated by a Trickett tripwire.

Of course none of my fury is based on reality – Olympic finals are usually raced live in strange time zones at ungodly hours to be sampled in packaged pre-recorded prime time later.

But I didn’t care. I wanted what was mine – to sit down at 7.30pm and watch those cocky Americans take us apart race by race … as the impossibly nice Michael Phelps out-Spitz Mark Spitz.

On second thoughts, maybe I’ll just rent DVDs until the swimming is over – to take my mind off holding the NBC execs to ransom.

I haven’t seen Eric Bana in Munich. I hear he’s deadly good. It might be time.