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A tune that began as a scratchy 12-second clip sung into a Dictaphone five years ago will be bombarding Olympic followers in every corner of the country over the coming weeks.

The official theme song of the Olympic broadcast media consortium - to be woven throughout the sprawling coverage of the Vancouver Games - begins heavy rotation on the radio Thursday and, as of Jan. 26, will be downloadable for a price, even in ring-tone format.

The soon-to-be-ubiquitous melody is the brain child of Stephan Moccio, 37, a Toronto composer who has written songs for stars ranging from Céline Dion to Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman. Those original few bars have been spun into some 220 different cuts of varying length, tone and instrumentation as well as full-fledged songs sung bilingually by 15-year-old prodigy Nikki Yanofsky and Saguenay, Que., chanteuse Annie Villeneuve.

"It's been a dream experience as a musician. I've had a chance to exercise a lot of my chops," Mr. Moccio said from his Toronto studio. "[The project] had one of the biggest music budgets you would ever see in Canada."

As a teenage piano student, Mr. Moccio was blown away by David Foster's piano-heavy theme for the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The feelings of national pride it stirred in him have been percolating ever since.

"[Watching Foster] I was just in the fetal position, crying. I thought this was the coolest thing," Mr. Moccio said.

About four years ago, after Vancouver had won the Games, the theme came to him as he was driving one day. He stowed away the tiny recording for years. The first to hear it was his friend Alan Frew, the front man of Newmarket, Ont., band Glass Tiger, who later wrote the lyrics for the sung versions, now titled I Believe and J'Imagine. At a dinner party, the two men button-holed consortium president Keith Pelley.

"I looked Keith straight in the eye and said, I have your theme," Mr. Moccio said. Mr. Pelley and the other consortium members agreed.

Dan Cimoroni, VP of business development for the consortium, said many different singers were considered, and Ms. Dion was asked to do the honours, but she declined.

"I don't think that's any disrespect to the artists we have. She was a natural. She sings in English and French and she likes the Olympic games, but she's just in a different life cycle and it didn't fit what she wanted to do next," Mr. Cimoroni said.

Mr. Moccio had worked with both Ms. Villeneuve and Ms. Yanofsky and decided they had the right sound. The tunes will be part of the consortium's "Believe" campaign, which includes cinematic commercials and even apparel, and is designed to "galvanize Canada," according to Mr. Cimoroni (as well as attract viewers and sales, of course).

The main version of the theme is a robust orchestral piece driven by timpani and fanfare, and Mr. Moccio calls it unapologetically "über-commercial and über-classical." More than two dozen versions exist, cut to lengths to fill the cracks in any broadcast.

Some were recast to convey different moods - glory, sadness, drama, etc. - and recorded by outfits including the Canadian Children's Opera Company. So the ditty introducing news that Canada has just won gold will be far different from the one that prefaces word of dashed hopes.

One version, dubbed Fanfare, is similar to the main theme but infused with a greater sense of adrenalin and anticipation. Another, Extreme, casts the melody in aggressive, electronic tones that that Mr. Moccio conceived as "Kanye West meets rock," tailored to a younger demographic.

The sung versions are slower and softer but equally lofty, with phrases such as "in my heart there'll be no doubt" and "I believe together we'll fly."

"The song is just such a universal message. It doesn't even need to be applied to the Olympics. It's really just about believing in yourself and your talent, and that when you're down, there's people around you that really do support you," Ms. Yanofsky said from her home in Montreal.

"It's really something I believe in. Pardon the pun."