The Olympic Creed

As this is the year of the Olympics (yet again!), I thought I’d dust off an old speech I gave at Rostrum about the Olympics. It was originally written at the time of the Sydney Olympics, so I’ve slightly updated it and hopefully it makes sense out of its original context. I’m wanting this blog to diverge a bit from the pure IS management issues, but these non-IS posts probably serve to remind us that IS is not all!

It is a little glurge-like, but this is different to the usual glurge. After all, I wrote it!

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The Olympic Creed

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. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.

This is the Olympic Creed.

Every two years – with the Winter Olympics – the world’s athletes come together to celebrate and honour this creed.

The most important thing is not the triumph, but the struggle.

Our athletes struggle every day. There were 628 athletes in the Australian Olympic Team at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Australian athletes won 58 medals. The vast majority of Australia’s athletes have struggled for four years to be on the team, and they will return home without a medal, but not empty-handed. For them the struggle continues. These athletes have fought well, and fought hard, made enormous sacrifices upon the field of human endeavour to be the best across the entire Australian continent at their chosen sport.

And the struggle to match the words of the Olympic Creed is a hard struggle indeed for many athletes. Many are not from excessively privileged backgrounds, they are self-sufficient and focused. It takes enormous financial and human resources to compete at the Olympic level.

To be an Olympic competitor takes guts, and spirit, and obsession. There is absolutely no room for a lacklustre attitude. No other person will compete in your sport for you. You must make do with what nature provided you with. If fallen arches in your feet are a problem, then work with it. If you fall off and break a collarbone, screw the bones together, grit your teeth, and pedal your pain-wracked heart out. If you tear the ligaments in your foot, slow your training – but only a little, because to do otherwise is not the creed of an Olympian. The most important thing is not the triumph, but the struggle.

As a nation, we rightly admire these athletes, for the ten minute period they fill the television screen on the weekend. We sit on our couches and stare at the screen, insipidly fingering the remote control when a slightly boring sport comes on. We meander through the channels, surf the airwaves, for something that will hold our attention for a few more seconds. We live vicariously through the screen-sized endeavours of our lycra-clad athletes. When Ian Thorpe won gold, it was an exultant cry of “we won, we won!”. As if we were there in the pool. When Kitty Chiller placed 14th in Modern Women’s Pentathlon… well, who’s heard of Kitty Chiller? She lost – no medal, surely, is the same as losing? – but what about Thorpey, eh? A dismissive wave of the hands will soon put it right.

And yet, if you sit back a minute, leave the remote alone, and look at this theatrical performance in the cold hard light of your lounge room, while Kitty is at the back of the pack – who has lost? Is it the sportsperson who has come fourteenth on a lonely planet full of over five billion people? Or is it the person that chooses to watch, to pontificate, and to finally, arbitrarily, dismiss the world-class performance, and for whom the need to desperately find the remote to change the channel is of primary importance but, somehow, beyond our skill?

The Olympic Creed is least of all about the Olympics. It is about life, and how we deal with the brickbats that living life will always throw at us. It is not about emerging triumphant – dismiss any notions of defeatism, there just aren’t enough medals for everyone to win! Life is about the struggle to achieve a worthwhile goal. The Olympic Creed is about contributing in your field, about making the world a better place for your presence.

There are too many of us, too many of the billions on this planet, that are prepared to sit back and coast. Too many of us seek to detract from the achievements of others. We blame others for our own personal misfortune, and moulder quietly back into the couch with the sweat-stained remote control. Too many of us stand up and say, “Society owes me. Society must support me.” The newsflash is, society is each of us. Each of us has abilities as yet untapped. Every last soul on the planet has the potential to achieve and contribute enormously to the society that we wish to support us.

Yes, there are problems to be hurdled, issues to be dealt with. We might even need society’s help for some time. However, we can all contribute and leave this world a better place for our presence. Let’s try to live the Olympic creed, as it is intended.

The next time you and I choose to decompose within our couch whilst reaching for the remote, think of some of the ways you could better society with only the smallest of struggles in comparison to those of our Olympians.

Here are some of the options that mark you and I as contributors to our society.

You can provide respite care for the elderly, or for the sick and impaired. If you volunteer to help in that one small way, for, say, one day a month, you will be providing what is a lifeline to another person in need.

You can give blood at the Red Cross. We’ve all got more than we need, so give a little away. Each drop is precious.

Enter a bike ride to raise funds for a charity, and shamelessly guilt-trip everyone around you into making a donation. It works for some, and at the end of the day you’ve made a contribution to a worthy cause.

These are only some of the ways that you and I can contribute. Do not bemoan your apparent lack of talent – talent is usually the result of sheer hard work. Natural talent only goes so far, and do not be discouraged by an initial lack of success.

To whine about your shortcomings, and to expect others to fix them, is not the Olympic creed. You must fight well, and for the fight, for your struggle, you will leave this world with the words, “They made a difference” ringing in your ears. And that is an Olympian’s reward.