Lessons we can all take away from the Olympics

Dear editor:
My wife and I devoured every televised moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics that we could. To us, the Olympics is the ultimate “feel-good” moment, where people, representing diversity of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and economic standing come together in the spirit of inclusive, peaceful, and respectful competition. The varied back stories of the athletes are heartwarming, and their accomplishments awe-inspiring. But I also recognize that these moments are fragile.
Both my most elating, and depressing, Olympic memories involved the Sarajevo winter Olympics of 1984, where the small host country displayed so much pride, hope, and promise. Their Olympic theme jingle haunts me to this day, along with visions of their mascot, Vucko. Most of all, it was about the children — I remember the many smiling, excited, costumed children involved in their ceremonies. However, within six years of these Olympic games, ethnic confrontation resulted in the destruction of Sarajevo, the slaughter and rape of thousands of Yugoslavian citizens, economic collapse, and with many of the surviving Olympic facilities utilized either as prisons or for mass executions of the resident Bosniaks. Fast forward to the Tokyo Summer Olympics of 2021, which were immediately followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Olympics offers us many lessons of peace, acceptance and inclusion within a world too often wracked by ethnic oppression. As we face the upcoming political election cycle, I do hope that we reflect on the lessons that the Olympics provides and, in doing so, place our votes with respect to the future we wish to see for our children.
Dan Close
Greybull