With a new leap year upon us, the following question is hovering in the air around us: Are the Olympics relevant anymore? While many people look at this as a difficult question, the resounding answer is… Yes!!!! Yes, yes, absolutely, yes!!! The Olympics are a crucial part of modern society.
While the world is busy following football (soccer if you’re in the US) or baseball, American Football, basketball, hockey, or cricket, there is a magic that fills the air every four years. The magic is the Olympics. The modern day Olympics have been bringing nations together in friendly rivalry since 1896, and with the exception of the years of World War, have brought an amazing opportunity for nations to come together in a peaceful environment, to challenge each other in friendly athletic competition.
With the exception of the 1972 (Munich Israeli Hostage Crisis), the 1980 (US boycott of the Moscow games), and the 1984 (Soviet boycott of the Los Angeles games), the Olympics have been the stage for all the countries of the world to come together to compete in peace. Whether it be winter or summer competitions, for over a century the world has been sending its greatest athletes to compete against each other, to determine which country or which individual has what it takes to be the “best in the world.” No other event captures the essence of greatness quite like the Olympics.
Take Muhammad Ali, for example. No matter how much a person talks about his accomplishments in the sport of boxing, you will never find a single reviewer who leaves out the fact that Ali won the 1960 Gold Medal in the Olympics held in Rome, Italy. At the same time, you will be hard pressed to find a historian who fails to mention that despite Michael Jordan winning six NBA championships, he also won two gold medals at the Olympics, one in 1984 and the other in 1992.
While the Olympics seemed to have cooled off in prestige in the past several decades, especially with regards to popularity, it’s hard to deny the fact that more people in the world know the name of Michael Phelps, winner of six gold medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and winner of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics held in Beijing, than those who have heard the name Birgit Prinz, the all-time FIFA Women’s leader in scoring, with fourteen goals in World Cup competition.
Despite the popularity of Olympic athletes such as Michael Phelps capturing the imagination of the world’s press and taking away the limelight of the Olympics, every four years, including 2012, the world always comes together and puts on a marvelous display of sportsmanship which makes all citizens of the globe proud to be a part of such a beautiful world. May the tradition of the Olympics carry on for centuries to come. The Olympics are more relevant than ever.
