If you visit the olympics website, you will find these words as a description of Olympic values:
The three values of olympism are excellence, respect and friendship. They constitute the foundation on which the olympic movement builds its activities to promote sport, culture and education with a view to building a better world.
Striving for excellence encourages people to be the best that they can be. Demonstrating respect encompasses respecting yourself, the rules, your opponents, the environment, and the public.
Celebrating friendship is a huge benefit of the Olympic Games, because the event brings people together across the world every few years. This meeting allows competitors to set aside their rivalries and cheer for each other. Olympians soon realize that there is always more that unites us than divides us.
Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole, the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, the Olympics seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in the effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
And every time we watch the Olympic Games we are drawn into the lives of some of the competitors. I love this post I saw a few days ago:
“My threshold for tears is so low during the olympics. Guy I know nothing about 3 minutes ago sets a new olympic record in a sport I barely understand? Baby, I’m crying for him.”
In past Olympics, we watched American middle-distance runner Mary Decker fall after a collision with South African Zola Budd during the 1984 Games.
I remember watching American swimmer Mark Spitz win seven gold medals in Munich in 1972, and who could forget American gymnast Kerri Strug — certainly not the greatest ever American female gymnast — but the one we will remember — because of that one vault she did at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
After injuring her left ankle in a previous vault, she took one final vault, landed, hopped slightly on her one good leg, and clinched the gold medal for the US.
Paris 2024 has given us many great moments as well. Moments that remind us that athletes are flawed humans. Moments of glory and surprise. Moments of comeback and defeat.
Consider this sweet story of friendship that began five years ago. American Gymnast Jordan Chiles was ready to quit gymnastics. She had been passed over for big assignments year after year due to lack of consistency. The environment was toxic, and many in the gymnastics community had written her off.
But fellow American gymnast Simone Biles invited Jordan to relocate from Washington to Texas to join the gym that she owned — a safe space with a positive environment. When Jordan arrived, the first thing they worked on was not building her skills, but instead building her confidence. Simone and Jordan competed together and medaled in the Paris Olympics. Trophies are nice, but the biggest flex is winning together and creating an environment where others thrive too.
Speaking of thriving, let’s consider the enormous determination of the Olympic athletes from Ukraine, for whom each medal awarded has been a symbol of resilience and defiance as their nation is at war. Each medal is rare good news in an otherwise somber period of their lives.
When the Ukrainian fencing team won the country’s first gold medal of the Paris Games, fencer Olga Kharlan stated: ”I wanted the whole world to hear our national anthem, to stand up for it, to see our flag.” How incredibly important it was for those athletes to show the world that Ukraine could win.
In addition to the comeback stories among the athletes this year, let’s take a moment and discuss the opening ceremonies. Standing on the balcony of the Eiffel Tower, the Olympic rings affixed to its iron sides, world-renowned singer Celine Dion serenaded more than 300,000 spectators, including an estimated 6,800 athletes, in an emotional comeback from illness.
Her powerful performance marked the first time that Dion has sung live since she was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome in 2022. The rare neurological disease causes muscle spasms and rigidity in the torso and limbs.
Most devastating for Dion, the disease has also made it hard for the Canadian singer to control her vocal cords. And her performance was spell-binding, as she sang France’s most famous song about love. I also heard recently that while other performers used pre-recorded versions of their songs during the opening ceremony, Celine Dion performed live.
If you are like me, you may watch the Olympics and feel somewhat disconnected. I can’t do that kind of stuff. I’m old. And even when I wasn’t old, I couldn’t do that kind of stuff. But let’s remember the incredible connections that we can make to the Olympic Games. The games are not just about winning medals.
The games are about the journey. The games are about determination. The games are about setting a goal and seeing it through. Those are things I can do. Those are things we all have been doing our whole lives. We are connected to these games. We can find parallels in our lives.
Pierre de Coubertin was a French educator and historian. He is known as the father of the modern Olympic Games. He was highly educated and was instrumental in the organization of the International Olympic Games. He wrote these powerful words back in 1935:
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.” — Pierre de Coubertin
With those words, we are reminded of the value of participation and the journey of striving for greatness rather than solely focusing on the outcome. The true measure of success lies in the effort and dedication invested in the pursuit of a goal, rather than the outcome itself.
That sounds pretty much like our lives, doesn’t it? As I look around this room, I see a roomful of gold medalists. We all have a story of struggle to tell, don’t we? We all have had some incredible moments of greatness, moments of working through difficulties and moments of defeat. We all deserve our moment on the podium, an interview to share with the world, and a medal to commemorate our success for the journey traveled.
So, although it sounds a little odd, I think we should align ourselves with the Paris athletes — we must recognize and congratulate ourselves for the dreams we have dreamed — the victories we have won, the medals that we deserve after those really tough races. We see ourselves in the defeats, and we can remind ourselves that even Olympic athletes struggle and fail. Our success may not be in the Olympics, but success can be in healing a relationship, starting the job, finishing school, working on our mental health, fixing our credit, putting in the hours — the places no one sees that really matter, that make a difference in life.
Throughout the Bible there are metaphors for our life journey, and passages that encourage us to stick with it — whatever the it may be.
And one of the metaphors for our life used in the Bible is running a race. It’s a fitting metaphor, because running a race — a really LONG race is like the living of our lives. So, I love this passage that appears in the book of second Timothy:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” — 2 Timothy 4:7
If at the end of our time on this earth we can proclaim that we have done our best — we have not only run the race, but we finished it, we can consider ourselves successful. And perhaps fortunate. And if, in the process of that journey, that race, we have kept the faith — we have continued to believe — in ourselves, in others, in God, in our dreams, then we truly are gold medal olympians. My friends, keep going. Keep trying. Keep having faith. Keep believing. Keep putting in the hours. Keep fighting for your dreams. Amen.
American track and field Olympian Jesse Owens once stated:
“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that’s where it’s at.”
My prayer for each of us today, is that we all might have courage and resilience for the journey that we are on, and for the struggles that lie ahead.
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