At least one of my colleagues has challenged me on my observation that athletes seem to go to the Oympics to win, not to learn. I’ve been watching the games for more than a week now, and I’ll admit that I was probably a little off the mark.  That same colleague has pointed me to the postings of Elliott Masie (http://www.masie.com ) on the training and coaching that is going on at the games. You can actually see that happening, for example as the coaches speak to high divers after they’ve completed each dive, presumably to help them correct for the next dive. 

I still think the main goal of all the competitors is to win. But based on all the interviews I’ve watched, there are a lot of them, particularly the younger folk, who go for the experience and truly want to pick up ideas from the mature, successful athletes.  Many of them say so to the camera, and the commentators point out that they will be back in 2012 when they’ve grown a little more in the standings.  As for unintended learnings, the camera shows that the intercultural interchanges are quite remarkable. 

The big question that is being hotly debated in Canada’s popular press whether the cost of sending athletes to the Olympics can be justified if they are not at the point in their careers where they have learned enough to win.  Is the price of admission worth it to taxpayers, when we need to pay for learning in so many other areas–literacy, English as a Second Language, trades and technology?  How does it help us to solve the world’s problems if we dedicate resources to sports? Yes, the athletes I’ve seen being interviewed are very bright, articulate people, but will they repay the investment in them by assisting to increase global harmony, or will they continue to focus on their own aims to achieve stronger, higher, further?   

I don’t pretend to have answers, but just a lot of questions, and perhaps I’ll wait until 2010 to resume this Olympic thread.

Some people think the Olympic Games are nothing more than a commercial opportunity to promote Wonder Bread.  (BTW, I love the Wonder Bread ads they’re running right now, with children trying out sports, even though some people object.  The little kid trying to move a curling rock brings back memories of my own failed attempt to curl!)

Myself, I like the Olympic Games because of the vision they can reflect if our eyes aren’t clouded by cynicism–or Beijing fog/smog.  I focus on the extraordinary effort of the athletes, and consider them all winners–which is why I hate the way the TV interviewers pounce on “losers” demanding to know why they “failed”!

In particular, I like to idea that we might one day live in a world where people meet and interact, where competition is keen but nobody dies (sigh for Munich) and where the whole world participates in whatever way they can in a cultural exchange.

I’ll argue there isn’t enough of a focus on learning at the Olympics, beyond recognizing the skills that the competitors have acquired and their obvious intelligence in applying those skills.  I’m fairly sure that the athletes don’t strive to reach world class standards in their sport in order to demonstrate their knowledges. It seems to me they are there to win, not to show what they have learned.  However, there are unintended teachings and learnings about culture, communication styles, political infrastructures, ethics…and so on.  Those who criticize and ignore the games are surely overlooking the opportunities for interchanges that can educate us and serve to strengthen international ties.

I live in hope that world peace will prevail, even while I recognize the near impossibility of that.   Of course, I am not naive enough to think that all peoples can live in harmony and agree on all things. I have a fair amount of interpersonal conflict in my own life, and I know there are some people I will never like, and who will never like me.  But if we can know enough about each other to break down barriers such as race, gender and class, and if we can educate ourselves enough to find solutions to battles over land and religion, then maybe we can share the same planet without killing each other.