The Glorious Games

On August 5^th 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.