Besides a desire for digging up some records or maybe borrow Jacques Rogge's or Boris Johnson's personal i-pod, I would have to recognize that very few nations could pull off a show like Brittania did at the closure of the London summer olympics. A window to the world, smoothly mixing domestic tradition with rebellion, portions of nearly popular bad taste, sarcasm and without arrogance, reminding us of British branding with the appropriate contemporarian twist to the olympic message. Neither too little nor too many ingredients, like a typical masala dish.
Like his predecessors, Jacques Rogge is well on the way in presiding over the sustainable construction of something greater and evidently more so than, for instance, his fellow countryman Herman van Rompuy backed by other Brussels based nationally delegated waged politicians.
The comité international olympique has seen its share of intercontinental armed confllicts, propaganda, terrorism and boycots threatening its fundamentals. Like any large organization it does not portray a perfect transparent democracy in its functioning and decisionmaking, but has managed to be the undisputed speerhead of by now more than 200 national committees made up of countries' many private of government controlled sportsfederations composed by sportsclubs and corporations many of which represent the type of egos and stars we do not see, yet, at the olympic games.
Yet the mission and values toned at the top of the IOC seem to be at such a short distance from a single potential sportsperson somewhere in the world. Ask athletes from South-Sudan, East Timor or Yugoslavia what the IOC did for them when their countries were still overwhelmed with smoking guns, or check with disabled warveterans who set the stage for paralympics. Then there are the youth olympics or the Truce Foundation.
If sports and athletism are to be given the significance what popmusic meant in the last few decades, than this obese world may actually get a bit fitter.
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