"The Olympic
games are competitions between individuals, not between
nations".
Such were the words used by Pierre DE COUBERTIN when
hi wrote article 7 of the International Olympic Committee
Charter.
World Citizens think the same thing !
But Olympics, as most human organizations, have been
lured into worshipping, every day, in a more fanatic way,
new gods : the Nations-States.
The athletes have become the servant of the nation
that shapes them, that trains them, that pays them. The
champion has to be grateful for this, so, when he gets to
the podium, he must be the emblem of the glory of his
nation, show off for the flag, the anthem, the grandeur,
the genius of his nation. The competition is no longer
sports, but politics. If the champion wins, his or her
mother country is praised and sung, if he or she loses,
it is a national disaster. Actually, in our world divided
between rival Nation-States, any athletic competition at
international level, becomes a fight between nations.
While the world over, the heavy noise of army boots is
heard, while the political leaders speak of the threat of
war, the peoples are trifled with and told the story of
the boycott of Olympics.
These games, though, at first, were meant to be in
perfect contradiction with nationalism. Why not imagine,
to day, that modern nations should agree, as the ancient
cities of Greed did, on a truce that would enable each
young participant, wherever he or she comes from, to win
if he or she is the best athlete ?
Why should we not revert to Olympics that have no
anthem, no flag, no national interest ?
Why could not the location where Olympic Games take
place be chosen in a completely neutral,
extra-territorial spot, more so in one of the thousand
mundialized cities which have been created throughout the
world ?
Then, little by little, mankind would progress towards
the reducement of national sovereignty that René
CASSIN, the father of Universal Human Rights and Nobel
Prize for Peace had so ardently wished for.
