Jin De Silva hasn't missed a summer Olympics since 1984.

But the one he really should have been at was the 1948 games in London.

That year, De Silva qualified to represent his native Sri Lanka in the 400-meter hurdles. But the government could afford to send only two athletes — and De Silva was cut.

His teammate, Duncan White, captured the silver medal in the event.

De Silva, whose slight frame is only somewhat slowed by age, still feels pangs of regret. But he's found another way to live his Olympic dreams: collecting.

While his former employer, Doris Duke, amassed Islamic art — De Silva had been her right-hand man at Shangri-La since 1979, and remains the estate's caretaker — the former track star has his own magnificent obsession.

De Silva has more than 10,000 pieces of Olympic history. And in true Olympic spirit, he has no interest in turning a profit from his collection.

"I have never sold anything," said the 78-year-old. "I have a true love for the sport and the spirit of the Olympic games."

You name it, De Silva's probably got it — stamps to ashtrays, ceramic plates to parking passes.

But the cornerstone of his collection is his commemorative and participation medals, each carefully secured in a plastic viewing case.

He has participation medals that stretch through time from the 1912 Stockholm Olympics to 2004 summer games in Athens.

De Silva's most memorable item, though, is a commemorative gold medal of Jesse Owens, given to him by Owens' widow, whom he met at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

"I got goosebumps because he was my hero, and this was a big honor for me," said De Silva, who, after seeing a film of the 1936 Olympics as a youngster, wrote a letter to Owens about his dreams of being an Olympian hurdler. The gold-medalist track star wrote back and sent De Silva a training schedule.

That training schedule is one piece of his personal Olympic history De Silva never kept.

Another prized possession: an official badge issued to Hawai'i's Olympian Duke Kahanamoku for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and a handkerchief adorned with the Olympic rings given to him by Kahanamoku's widow, Nadine.

He has a toy Coca-Cola truck from the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics that even the company doesn't have in its own collection. He bought it at a thrift shop for 25 cents. The company offered him more than $5,000 for it, but he turned it down.

The collection even stretches to the Ancient Olympic Games. About five years ago, a Greek priest, impressed by De Silva's dedication to Olympics memorabilia, gave the collector a handmade medallion from the games held in 356 B.C.

"It's worth more than money," De Silva said proudly.

One thing the collector doesn't have is an actual Olympic medal. De Silva got close to buying one a few years ago, when an athlete from Kenya offered to sell his.

The selling of gold medals may shock Americans, who see Olympic medals as pieces of history and honor. But to many athletes from poorer countries, De Silva said, these medals garner enough money to feed entire families for years. And that's often more important than their prestige.

"In America ... (the medals) are worth more than money," De Silva said. "But for other (countries) ... they're survival for a whole village."

Because of the size and value of his collection, De Silva can't keep it in his Hawai'i Kai townhouse, which he shares with wife Ann. So he keeps the items safely tucked away in a separate location.

But he's not hiding his collection.

De Silva exhibits yearly — and definitely during Olympic years — around the world. He's been invited to display his memorabilia at every Olympics since 1984. He takes his collection to conventions, schools, museums and shopping malls. He's exhibited at the U.S. Olympic Complex in Colorado Springs, Colo., and at the Olympic Museum in Switzerland.

He's so well-known in the global Olympic community — he's the fourth lifetime member of the Olympin Collectors Club, the world's largest Olympics collectors club — that Olympians visit him when they're in town.

Over the years, he's met many of the greats — his heroes — from Owens to Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

He's planning to go to thesummer games in Beijing in 2008, "God willing," he said.

For now, he's watching the Winter Olympics in Turin on TV, rooting for his favorite athletes, such as Apolo Anton Ohno.

"My dream is that someday this will all end up in a museum," De Silva said, standing over a table full of medals, mugs and plates. "I have one of the largest collections of Olympic memorabilia in the whole world. And to be recognized for that — what more can I ask for?"