The Olympics can offer hope in tough times
The athletes in Salt Lake City can teach the world’s leaders a thing or two about peace and brotherhood.
By competing against each other with dignity and pride, the hundreds of athletes of the 19th Winter Olympiad are showing the world that the ideals of peace put forth by the Olympic Movement are still worth aspiring to.
To be sure, there have been controversies and the Olympics, as they currently are run, leave a lot to be desired:
‡ A bribery scandal clouded the choice of Salt Lake City for the games, leading to a reorganization of the International Olympic Committee and reforms in the way sites are selected.
‡ The level of corporate involvement makes one wonder whether the Olympics have become just another subsidiary of McDonalds or a major athletic shoe maker.
‡ There are many who believe the Canadian pairs figure skaters were robbed of a gold medal by the judges earlier this week and others believe sports like snowboarding have no place in the games.
But these controversies are unimportant when one realizes what the games are meant to represent symbolized by the five, interlocking Olympic rings. The conjunction of the rings, one each for the five continents (Australia and Antarctica were not viewed as continents at the time of the first Games), was meant to symbolize the coming together of the people of the world during the Games and the ideal of peace and brotherhood for the entire planet.
The timing of this year’s Games is important, coming in the wake of the terror attacks of last September and the subsequent war on terrorism and the routing of the Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
The Games do not exist in a vacuum, of course. They are a part of the world in which they exist. During their history, there have been boycotts and cancellations, a terrorist attack on the Israeli team and an attempt by Adolph Hitler to prove his racial theories on the fields of competition.
But through it all, the basic ideals of the Games’ founders have remained strong to bring the nations of the world together in athletic competition.
The Games lend hope at a time of uncertainty, a glimmer of peace and a sign of the what the future might bring.
The 3,500 athletes competing at this’s Winter Games remind us that our differences race, ethnicity, language, class are not have to matter as much as our similarities.