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It goes to the person of representing that country.
If we think like you there would be no olympics.
The purpose of the Olympic Games is to bring the world together in peace, unity, and mutual strength through a festival of sport. That is the overarching theme behind each Olympics Games. The competitions are integral to that objective - but the medals are ideally a secondary component.
It is true that the Olympics have not always lived up to their billing - as its cancellation during two world wars, numerous boycotts, the elevated importance of medal count during the Cold War, a stage for terrorism, and the more recent overt commercialism(although it can be argued that commercialization has helped finance the games well enough that the focus can return on the athletes and the coming together of the world) can attest to.
For me - the most poignant symbol of what the Olympics is about is the fact that during the Opening Ceremony - the athletes enter separately with their national contingents - and during the Closing Ceremony - they march intermingled with each other. The Olympics represent the ability for people to put aside their differences for a few short weeks every two years and live, work, and play in harmony. If that can be done in the name of a sports festival - maybe it can be done all the time in the rest of the world.
Yes, the Mexican flag being hoisted above the American flag at an American high school is divisive. Why? It's divisive because it puts a different nation above the United States on American territory. Whoever did it, was expressing Mexican nationalism. Nationalism is divisive because the beliefs that support nationalism are all about exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness. The Olympics are not about exclusiveness. They are a celebration of human achievement. The fact that it is countries fielding the teams doesn't mean that the rules of sportsmanship are negated. Sportsmanship demands that we focus on the achievements, and that we accord those achievements the respect they deserve.
And you may think my arguments are weak and silly. It's too bad your arguments are non-existent.
Can't rep you again - very well said.
Yes - the Olympics are about human achievement and also about what we can achieve if we stop fighting each other. and strive to live in peace.
lockdown is great on any public facility inc university that disrespects the american flag.
this is the government that feeds you, u bite the hand u pay the price.
It's an athletic competition between the best athletes in the world. You insist that it has to be a competition between countries. I say that at its heart, the Olympics is a competition between athletes. It's about sports and sportsmanship. What exactly about the competition would mean its extinction by my way of thinking?
You forgot one caveat. Countries represented. This is 2012.
Countries setting aside their differences.
The offenses against the Olympics and the Olympic traditions are when countries fail to put aside their differences.
This is 2012. And the Olympics this year included more countries and more athletes than ever before. To establish the things we have in common with each other, to celebrate not one nation, but to celebrate all nations and to celebrate the human spirit. The Olympics is about overcoming the false dichotomies that separate the peoples of the world, the athletes competed regardless of which country they represented, which language they spoke, which religion they practiced. They came together, to test one another physically, to strive to run faster, to be stronger, to be more graceful. They came together to excel. And we who watched and cheered them on didn't just cheer for some Olympians, we cheered for them all, we cheered for excellence, we cheered for greatness.
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