Torino games exude Olympic spirit

I love the Winter Olympics. I prefer them to the summer games, despite having attended several events during the 1996 Olympics and not a single winter event.

There’s just something so much more graceful in the sports, something more magical in the snow. The ski jumpers floating through the air, speed skaters gliding along, the artistic movement of the figure skaters, the fascinating mystery that is the luge—I love every bit of it.

Last week’s opening ceremonies gave me a lot to think about. To begin with, American television made a good decision regarding the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. The fact that they’re calling them the Torino games, for one. On most maps in the English-speaking world, Torino is labeled as “Turin.” The Canadian Broadcasting Company has decided to retain the use of Turin, while the BBC will just refer to the Torino games as “the Winter Olympics,” according to nationalgeographic.com.

NBC, who has the American broadcasting rights to the games, thought that Torino sounded more exotic than Turin. And while the motives for using Torino’s Italian name may not have been the best, I do approve of the outcome. Perhaps the next Rome Olympics will use “Roma,” and the countries in the parade of nations during the opening ceremonies will all be announced in their own languages, rather than English, French and the language of the host country. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I love the parade of nations. The athletes all walking through the stadium with their compatriots and athletes from around the world is a moving sight. They seem so happy to be there to represent their countries by doing what they love. Best of all, they are ordered by no means more discriminatory than the alphabet. The last host country leads; the current host country ends. All those in between follow the alphabet, the most populous and powerful nations mixed in with the smallest, for once forsaking the lead.

I was thinking about the wonder of this display of worldwide unity when the parade reached the Is and the mirage quickly vanished for me.

Iran marches in; the Israeli team was a few countries behind them. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stance against Zionism is well known, yet here are representatives of his country at the Olympic Games with the Israelis. I realize that the views of a country’s president are not always those of its citizens (Bush and myself are a testament to that); still it makes one pause. Especially when they are in the former Stadio Comunale, which was commissioned in the early 1930s by Benito Mussolini.

Still, the feel-good aura of the opening ceremony quickly returned, as North and South Korea marched in together for the first time at a Winter Olympics. Then Peter Gabriel sang “Imagine.” All the athletes were standing together in a pit in the middle of the stadium. They swayed to the music with their arms around their fellow athletes; I saw some members of the American team singing along. It was wonderful. As one of the commentators said, they were all “standing without borders” for the night.

It amazes me how athletic events, and the Olympics in particular, can bring the world together. The physical gathering of the nations of the world is something I cannot begin to fathom. It seems like a logistic impossibility to me; the International Olympic Committee does an amazing job of organizing such an enormous event. Bringing the world together in the sense of cooperation and unity also seems improbable to me, and yet it seems to happen on its own. How do sports do that?

The Olympics bring the world together in a competition that is not about land or money or religion or power. When one country goes home with a gold medal, the silver medalist’s country isn’t going to hold a grudge against the winner’s country; their loss may be disappointing, but they won’t go to war about it. And if the winner is a fellow countryman, they celebrate their nation’s victory together. The Olympics are about national pride and displaying that pride to the world.

There are 84 countries represented in the 2006 Games, including some I have never heard of. There are the usual suspects, such as the U.S., Canada and the Scandinavian countries, but there are also competitors from San Marino and Uzbekistan. There is a skier representing Ethiopia and a luge competitor from the Virgin Islands. They range in age from 14-year-old Chinese snowboarder Sun Zhifeng to 54-year-old American curler Scott Baird. The diversity is astounding.

And while not every person in those 84 countries watches the Olympics, those who do, even those who just happen to catch an event they hadn’t planned to watch cannot help cheering for their countries’ athletes and feeling a shared pride if they take a medal.

I was proud when Texan Chad Hedrick won the 5000-meter speed skating gold in his first-ever Olympic event. And when Frode Estil of Norway fell at the start of the men’s cross country 30 km pursuit, yet miraculously took a silver medal after starting the race in last place, far behind the others, I could barely contain my excitement.

I felt the same about China’s pair skaters Dan Zhang and Hao Zhang. When Dan took a hard fall following a throw, she skated off the ice in obvious pain; their music stopped. But after her trainers looked at her, they finished their program from where she had fallen; like Estil, they won the silver medal for their event.

These are just a few examples of athletes who embody the spirit of the Olympics. To come together with other athletes from around the world, to overcome all manner of challenges and perservere...amazing.

I guess the Olympics just make me proud of the world. I feel that everyone should try to watch at least an event or two—spend some time with your national, or international, pride!