Olympic Spirit

So we are well into the Olympic games and I'm curious, how many medals does your country have? Are they doing better or worse than expected? Is there talk of revamping the development programs and putting more money towards helping the athletes bring home the gold? And what about that Olympic Spirit?

See the last question is the key one there. We all pay attention to our country and how well they are doing in the games, how many medals they have, if there are enough gold medals, if we got them in the events we were expected to win. But is that really the Olympic Spirit? It's not "coming together to share in human achievement". It's more the traditional nationalistic "us" versus "them" mentality that has lead to such wonderful things as war (which incidentally has been started over as little as soccer match).

But then again, it's not like there is an actual definition of the Olympic Spirit, I tired to find one on the official Olympic page, let me know if you can find a definition for it. The closest I came was the Olympic Spirit web page, where they help build Olympic Spirit Centers. Now you think these guys could define the Olympic Spirit for me. Well this is what you get:

Olympic Spirit Mission Statement

Olympic Spirit Centers are designed to embody the heart, soul and global achievements of the Olympic Games, bringing the Olympic ideals directly to the people of the world in an inspiring and participatory entertainment and educational attraction.

Invoking the essence of the Olympic experience, Olympic Spirit Centers have universal appeal, and enable people of all colours and creeds, whether young or old, to celebrate, to be enriched and to be inspired by the spirit of Olympism.

Olympic Spirit communicates the Olympic values and ethos, inspires its visitors, promotes its partners and showcases its sponsors in an innovative and successful world-class leisure business.

Kind of a circular definition if you ask me.

I'm not sure if that whole ideal of human achievement is really seen properly through the current style of the Olympic games. It really is still a competition between nations, not a competition to surpass human limitations (cynically you could say that's the fight between the dopers and WADA). Maybe they should change the system up a little. The country that wins gold also has to train the worst place finisher in each sport. Silver takes care of the next worse and so on. Or maybe an adopt a country program, where the more successful countries help out the less successful ones. At least then it would start to take away some of the nationalistic overtones of the whole games.

So for now though, I suggest you no longer look at what country won what medal, but look at all the competitions and see how well the other medalists (glorious gold, acceptable silver and shameful, shameful bronze) did in the events.