Editorial of August 8, 2024

Citius, Altius, Fortius—Communiter

Right now, in Paris, the 2024 Olympics are well into their second week of keen athletic competition and international acclaim. There are 10,714 athletes, 329 events, 39 sports and 48 disciplines. It’s quite a long way from its beginnings, but it’s a pretty good show and it’s put on in a pretty good place, or places. It is giving us all a welcome break from the incessant ravages of our news—be it current, looped, fake or breaking.

Our present-day Olympics were inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, first held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. The exact year of the first Games is obscure; a widely accepted starting date is 776 BC, based on an inscription found at Olympia that lists the winners of a footrace that was held every four years, beginning in 776 BC. The founders, too, are unknown, though a popular myth identifies Heracles, who built the Olympic stadium, and his father, Zeus, as the progenitors. These early Games were religious and athletic festivals, held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, and though it is widely written that all conflicts among the participating city-states were postponed for the duration of the Games (the cessation of hostilities was known as the Olympic peace or truce) it, too, is indeed a myth. The wars were not suspended, but the religious pilgrims traveling to Olympia were allowed to pass through warring territories. The time was determined, vaguely, by the summer solstice. The Games featured many athletic sports—foot races, pentathlon, discus and javelin throwing, but also the pankration—unarmed combat sport similar to modern mixed martial arts; (the name derives from the Greek pan, meaning all, and kratos, meaning strength, might, power). Horse- and chariot-racing events were also included in the first Games, (a good reason for them to continue today, despite their staging costs and proposed dismissal. The breathtakingly beautiful and inescapably difficult event venue at Versailles last week was outstanding). The Games winners were admired and immortalized in word and image, bringing them economic wealth and sponsorships; their medal was a wreath made from the sacred olive tree growing in the precinct of Zeus.

Sometime around 393 AD, the Romans put an end to the Games, decreeing that all pagan cults and practices be eliminated and, in 426 AD, destroying all Greek temples. The Games were revived in Athens in 1859 by Evangelos Zappas and held sporadically there until 1890, when Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a supporter of international peace and friendship through sports, founded the International Olympic Committee, which was to establish internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years. The first such Games, in Athens in 1896, included 14 nations, 241 athletes and 43 events. The motto, adopted in 1894, was “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” recognizing the unifying power of sports. The second Olympiad was in Paris in 1900. And on they went. In 1924, the Winter Games opened (some ice events had been held in the Summer Olympics), though both were held the same year until 1994. Today, we have Games every two years, with each season four years apart; the Games motto is now “Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together,” adopted in 2021, adding the importance of solidarity to that unifying power of sports.

Unfortunately, the Paris Olympic Games did not come cheap, but at $9.7 billion, a tad over the $9.1 billion budgeted, they weren’t as expensive as others. In the recent past, $8.1 billion—the lowest—was spent on the Sydney Olympics in 2000; the most went to Beijing in 2008—$52.7 billion U.S. dollars. London spent $15 billion in 2012, 76 percent over its original budget but still less than Athens’ suspected $15 billion in 2004. The new venues, stadiums, and arenas were all supposed to add value and tourist temptation to the cities in which they were built, bringing in people and businesses, but that has not panned out well recently, and current thoughts that the cities that stage the Olympics will benefit from their large financial output are becoming obsolete. There is talk of portable stadiums, tracks and fields. But whatever it takes, the Olympics should stay. The Games are a significant global, distinctly uniting, and highly esteemed event that fosters international cooperation, individual goodwill and cultural exchange, just the thing for the cantankerous people of our difficult world to look up to.

Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together.