Sport participants and supporters are burdened by many superstitions. One is not to crow too early. But it is becoming harder and harder not to raise our arms to the Parisian sky and shout for joy.
With eight days’ competition decided, Australia has had its best-ever start to a Summer Olympics, amassing a stunning 12 gold medals, complemented by eight silver and seven bronze.
Across the nation, streets are quiet and lounge rooms glow warm with Olympic coverage as Australians join together to silently urge or pray or loudly cheer our athletes. The Olympics are surely a true and pure national bonding experience. They also show a gentle side of nationalism and seem to bring out our best, and goodwill perhaps sometimes absent when Australians compete in other international sporting arenas. They also present to the world the way we like to think of ourselves: young, talented, friendly and open-minded, and offering a glimpse of how people can live together in peace.
Australia has been at the Olympics since the beginning and over the years has personified many of the game’s initial aims. The founder of the modern Olympics, France’s Pierre, Baron de Coubertin, envisaged the games to be amateur, a glorification of youth and in the service of global harmony, famously saying that taking part, not winning, was the real the grail.
“The important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well,” he said.
His fine words carried the games through war and crisis, but it is often forgotten the Baron barred women from Athens in 1896.
“An Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper,” he said.
Fast-forward to 2024 and Paris reflects the massive societal changes across much of the planet and for the first time, the Olympics are boasting equal gender representation.
Loading
;Resize=(1180)&w=150&resize=150,150&ssl=1 "We took a ride in an award-winning solar-powered car made in Montreal")
