The
Glorious Games
On
August 5th the world saw the flags of 207 countries being held high
at the opening ceremony of the Olympics at Rio. We humans are finding trivial means
like caste, creed, colour and religion to divide thereby bringing more vacuum
among ourselves. But there are a few aspects that unite us very easily at a level
beyond all these man made divisions. We could cheer our hearts out for our country
but that would never stop us from recognizing a Usain Bolt, a Michael Phelps or
PV Sindhu. It is a rarity but the power that the spirit of sportsmanship has to
unite us should never be underestimated. It is the reason why we are proud from
the bottom of our heart for the achievements of the heroes and not about who
they are, where they belong from or what religion they follow.
This
Olympics also brought in “The team of Refugee Olympics” athletes. They fled
their country to save themselves and they survived. All the members of the team
have a story that will move you. Sports has reigned supreme in making us
believe that were humane and that matters more than the other factors. It
happens once in four years that we tend to realize that talent of the person
matters more than the trivial things we tend focus on.
In
a time when are battling global warming and climate change a beautiful
initiative by the organizers was the Olympic forest. Every athlete who is a
part of the Rio Olympics was given a seed and in total there was 207 species, one
to represent every participating country. The idea is to create an Athletes’
forest where every athlete would literally be leaving his mark for generations
to come. The idea in itself is so ecofriendly where the people whom we admire
so much are showing us by leading the way to creating a better and greener
tomorrow. Also the Olympic Cauldron was change to produce a smaller flame so as
to reduce its impact on the environment. These are small yet steady steps, a
conscious effort from the sporting world giving out a strong message.
From
India’s perspective, we have set our largest contingent to Olympics. All the
representatives of India at Rio this year have made us follow sports we would
rather not bother about. Everyone who has stood there has made us proud and for
once we did not curse them for not winning. We are elated that they made our
flag flutter high.
Despite all the positivity and glee, my fears
for them have also increased. We have this pattern of making sportspersons
Demi-God’s overnight, then one day when they do not perform up to OUR
expectations we tend to ridicule and look down upon them. These are people who have battled a lot of
odds, who have sacrificed things we cannot dare to imagine to reach the heights
that they have scaled today. There have been Olympics before and there will be
many to follow but hopefully this Olympics would be the turning point not just for
Indian sports and athletics, but also to us. There are fields and arenas to be
ventured yet and exploring them might bring us glorious gifts like what we
could appreciate this year archery, gymnastics and rowing.
This
Olympics for India has been better than before in terms of the events and number
of athletes participating and number of people cheering. We might not have won
many medals but yes we have realized the potential that we have and what can
happen when it is rightly nurtured. The
Olympics from an organizational standpoint has tried to bring to light through
athletes the problems we are facing and in their own subtle ways try to remind
us that we are still humans and beyond all we should be united by compassion
and humanity and try to make this a world a better place.
