PARIS

Paris, France. As I write my screen is showing images of the Olympics.

The city is, of course, jam-packed with athletes at the peak of their performance, all straining to compete better than they ever have before. They gather in national groups united and excited in the rain sodden opening.

I remember Melbourne and the Summer Olympics of 1956. The stakes were high then. Hungary and the Soviet Union were in armed conflict, but they each sent a team. East and West Germany sent one combined team. I was at the athletics at the MCG. Betty Cuthbert was the golden girl, we cheered from the outer. I was there on a date, a lovely sunny day-off I thought, but not as awesome as a footy grand-final.

An organiser of this Melbourne event, John Ian Wing, wrote:

During the Games there will be only one nation. War, politics and nationalities will be forgotten. What more could anybody want if the world could be made one nation. 

Hungary was competing with the Soviet team in a newly built swimming and diving stadium. Melbourne spectators cheered for Hungary. I wasn’t at the stadium, we didn’t have TV, but I remember that the Soviet versus Hungary water-polo contest resulted in something like a brawl in the pool. A Hungarian athlete was taken from the pool with blood streaming from above his eye.  The game was stopped, it was declared finished. Hungary had the highest score when the contest was cancelled; the team went forward and achieved the gold medal. An ‘Olympic Motto’ was quoted in the press.

“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.”

When Sydney staged the Olympics, I watched Cathy Freeman on television, first lighting the flame and ten days later contesting the 400-meter run. This young woman was under intense pressure, from the press and from the public. Cathy, a First Nation woman, said that she was competing for her people as she ran. The media headline was ‘Australia Held its Breath’. Cathy was focused on her body and on her plan. ‘Don’t go to the front too soon. Save it, position yourself, save it for the last hundred meters. She reached the finishing line well ahead and crouched down on the ground.  Crowds of Australians roared, in the stadium and in every pub and meeting place across the land. There were tears, banners and flags. Cathy looked up at the screen to check her time and felt a moment of regret that, though she remained the fastest woman in the world, she had not established a new personal best.

To keep reaching a personal best then to go beyond that was always important to her. Should this be the Olympic spirit? To create a setting where each competitor can strive to top their personal best?

Since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the International Olympic Committee amended the Olympic motto to include the word ‘Together’.

The motto now reads: “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”.

As I write I watch ‘Paris 2024’.

Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariana Titmus have just won the Gold and the Silver in the 200-meter freestyle swim. Their finish is very close. They both have set a record, faster together. Still in the water they hug each other. They stand together on the top step of the podium, Mollie with the gold medal, Aliana with the silver. They have each topped their personal best. They thank their coach. They lead the relay team to another gold.

Many years ago, I spent a short time in Paris. I had just completed a week of silent, solitary prayer in Assisi; I had a few free days before a meeting in Switzerland.

In Assisi I had retraced the story of Saint Francis. Day after day I sat silently in the olive garden close to the small church that Francis had laboured over and built. He thought that God was inviting him to be a builder. When the building was complete, Francis realised that what needed to be rebuilt was the community of all of creation, and of humankind. He gave his life for the dream of humankind uniting in forming a community of peace, justice and love.

On my first day in Paris, I booked into a small room accessible by a creaking lift, left my travel bag there and walked along the left bank of the River Seine. I reached Notre Dame. The lowering-sun bathed the Cathedral in gold. I stood in a crowd edging towards the entrance with people from all over the world. I heard many languages; it was a patient peaceful throng. It was Pentecost. There was so much to love about Paris in the springtime.

Now news from Paris Olympics is interspersed with world news: so many tragedies, so many wars, deliberate targeting of the innocent, icecaps melting, fraud and dishonesty, trafficking in humans, species of living creatures being made extinct, homelands disappearing in flood and fire. Surely a message to the world, “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”. You can say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m obviously not alone in that. Now, in 2024, there are 8,118,835,999 people on Planet Earth. Each has a personal best to offer. Each has a circle of influence, miniscule or vast.

That sandal-clad simple prophet, Francis of Assisi, would love that word ‘together’. He might well still advise, ‘What needs to be rebuilt is not Church buildings; it is the community of all of creation, and of humankind’.

Surely there is something to be learned from the Olympic Spirit.

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