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24. června 2006

Amongst Olympians

Before 6am I lock the door to my cosy apartment which is my temporary home during these Olympics, and in my volunteer's uniform I head for the orange minibus stop, which will slowly travel down the winding road to Borgata - the little village lying below the ski resort of Sestriere, one of the Olympic venues. I muse upon what the day has in store for me ... Well, that's anyone's guess. But a hint is provided by my accreditation: The Olympic Village of Sestriere, Residence Services. While the bus is driving up the narrow road to Sestriere, all around in the dark snowy mountain peaks are jutting into the sky. The first day I did not even want to think about how downhill skiers will be throwing themselves headfirst down such sheer slopes in a quest for Olympic medals, but now I am rather used to the idea. Even if it looks like the descent is going to be a nice and easy, great courage is needed, as well as great caution and much training, just as seemingly straightforward situations in our lives frequently demand much from us ...After a security check, I am allowed into the still slumbering Olympic Village, which is aflutter with the flags of all participating nations, lined up beside each other in parity. On the way to the main reception area I pass several athletes - some are off for an early-morning run, others heading for breakfast. What will today bring them? A pay-back in the form of a medal for all their hard work, or disappointment and the end of their Olympic dream? And even if the merest fraction of a second can decide who wins and who is "only" taking part, this "only" is actually the most important thing. Standing on the winners' podium is a beautiful and assuredly hard-earned experience. But the Olympic ideal goes beyond this: it consists of displaying the ability to accept someone else's victory, of wishing him or her victory, not begrudging this victory and allowing oneself to be inspired by it to bettering oneself. The Olympic ideal is not about "destroying" your opponents. Even though acceptance of someone else's victory implicitly requires the acceptance of one's own defeat, they are not the same thing. Acceptance of one's defeat might lead to self-pity, which more often than not is very difficult to transform into the determination to compete again. Embracing the victory of a competitor however can bear fruit twice over: pleasure at the success of another, as a proof of true friendship (even if I lost this time), and an attempt to attain perfection hand-in-hand with one's victorious friend. Both these roads can lead to self-betterment, but travelling any road, albeit a competitive and individualistic one, is better with a friend than when alone. The Olympic Village starts to become animated with the first rays of the sun, and with it our reception area. Athletes are checking what the weather will be like and yesterday's results, and looking at the current starting lists. The Asian athletes are definitely early birds - no wonder, their homes in the East are the first to see the sun's face every day! For our team in the reception area, the day is also picking up speed. Our distinctive red sweatshirts are already getting us into our roles as the "worker ants", who solve the problems of our Olympian guests when the heating does not work, there is no hot water or a broken lock on the door, someone has lost a room-key or someone needs timetables for the buses to competition and training venues, as well as a thousand other miscellaneous problems. It can even become quite trying when someone persists all day in complaining about something or asks the same (already answered) question again and again. However, attempts to help and to find satisfactory solutions are made in a spirit of common human endeavour. How important it is to feel "I am contributing something here" and that it is always possible to find someone to help. Also the law of action and reaction applies: someone has to ask for help, and someone else has to give it. With every day that passes I am more aware of how important it is both to ask for help and to offer help smilingly, compliantly and kindly. Would that this friendly and cooperative Olympic atmosphere existed everywhere. This would move seemingly insurmountable problems into the realm of the solvable, you see. Around midday the space around the reception area turns into something resembling a living room, when several athletes wanting to take a break from working on their Olympic form settle down into the sofas and armchairs to follow on TV how their fellow Olympians are getting on. We are like one big family. Only their sports gear in the various national colours betrays the fact that they come from very different parts of the world. . As a matter of fact, all volunteers who are unmistakably recognisable because of their identical clothing, also form a "volunteer family", identifiable from the Noi 2006 (We 2006) on their gear. Amongst them you will find many retired people with a young and sporting spirit, who did not think twice about coming to contribute to the success of these Olympic Games. The volunteers as well as the athletes create the one-off mood inside the Olympic Village, which by animated interaction is passed from one person to the next. Even though Italians make up the majority of our team, communication within the team and also with the athletes takes place in a mixture of languages. Fortunately, as Pope John Paul II said, sport is the universal language which allows us to rise above the violence which is infecting the world. With a Finnish colleague from the reception team I sit down to lunch and we peruse the ice-hockey programme for Saturday, when the Czech Republic-Finland match will be played. We buy tickets beside each other. Each of us will of course be supporting her team - after all, only the players can decide who is going to win when they get on the ice. A tradition develops whereby one's afternoon coffee is enjoyed with a special edition newspaper, which in bright colours captures all the day's events not only in the Olympic venues, but more importantly reports on items of interest within the Olympic village. At reception a changing of the guard occurs and we pass on instructions to the colleagues who are replacing us. Today I am lucky enough to see the Olympic mascots Neve and Glize, who this afternoon are honouring the Olympic Village in Sestriere with a visit. They have a lot on their plate: they have to tour all the event venues, patiently posing for American photographers. Perhaps they even have doubles to help them out...Then I leave behind the chatter of the Olympic Village. I stand for a while in a small mountain church, which also has an Olympic flavour: Mass is being said alternately in Italian, English and German, and on the priest's vestments the five Olympic circles are stylishly displayed. The darkness is already enveloping Sestriere, where the Olympians are shining one after the other. They are no longer training, they are just strolling around the town's narrow streets. I am certainly walking past many stars of the sporting world, but they are unrecognisable. For a moment they have become "civilians", even though as early as tomorrow they could be listening to their national anthems with a gold medal hanging around their necks. On the little square passers-by are following on a big screen today's medal presentation ceremonies. Each evening on the Piazza delle Medaglie in Turin the three best athletes in each discipline are honoured. The Turin medals have a strange design - they have a hole in the middle. Did the International Olympic Committee want to save money? Of course not. They represent the open space of the Italian town square, the social and cultural centre of the Italy's towns. Perhaps there are other reasons: even if the new design is a symbol of Italy's town squares, it nonetheless always remains possible to see others through the perforation in the middle of the medal. So not even the medals are allowed to prevent the advancement of peace and understanding between the nations. On the contrary, Turin's medals contribute to this advancement. It is a late and icy evening in Sestriere-Borgata, Italy. I return to Borgata and hang up my volunteer's uniform in the wardrobe. The Olympic spirit pervades this quiet Olympic world, a spirit of hope, tranquillity, peace, understanding and friendship between the nations... If only this spirit could pervade the whole world, and not just this small Olympic world within a world...

Jana Hovorková

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