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Olympicized man feels towards his non-Olympicized fellow human being.
On the whole, Olympic participants in certain cultural zones remain insensitive
to the sports expectations of their youth. They just carry the Olympic Games in
their luggage once a year.
One could assume that through the Olympic Games a number of officials in
specific cultural zones who belong to the dominant social groups deliberately promote
a false vision of the Games by submitting the dominated groups to their material
and symbolic order. This approach contributes to the faster elimination of
the local sports culture from education for the benefit of a class or even a clean
sports culture. As a result we can witness sports behaviours, beliefs and attitudes
which in no way reflect Coubertin's vision of the Olympic Games.
Beyond the exaltation of the soul and character, Coubertin attached great importance
to the cultivation and beauty of the body. For him the Games ought to
symbolize the hopes of the lay world: acceptance of the others in their diversity,
without xenophobia or racism.
3. The vision of the Olympic Games: the development and mastering of
sports systems
It is only in this sense that the Olympic Games can become real sports systems,
well integrated in the education programmes of the different cultural zones, where
immutable values can be taught and transmitted through the body. The vision of
the Olympic Games therefore stems from this double task, build diversified sports
systems and liberate the body.
In this sense, Coubertin has given us an indication of what the Games should
be: a cyclical evaluation of sports systems, pedagogy, sensitivity, emotion, aesthetics,
fraternity and fair play in action. And it is here that we should ask ourselves
whether in the nature, the structure and the organization of the modern Olympic
Games we can find any trends or prospects relating to the development of real
sports systems on the one hand and, on the other, whether within each cultural
zone there are any real attempts to emancipate the human body through socialization
mechanisms. The emergence and evolution of these two basic components
of any contemporary sports movement, could make the object of a comparative
study in each cultural zone that would identify specific patterns of sports organization
within their society and the respect shown to the body.
What are the social and cultural functions which sport must perform, in the different
cultural zones, to arrive at a true communion of sports cultures in the Olympic
Games, free of any confrontation. Coubertin's vision of the Games was that of
a full presence and expression of sports and bodies. Coubertin did not want just
rudiments of sports and bodies. Today, however, technological development in
certain sports makes their practice more and more difficult in certain cultural
zones. It is a fact that the development of sports science and technology has made
the Olympic Games more and more a kind of private area where the two patterns
of man's existence can be openly revealed: one based on the philosophy of action,
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