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The Olympics still function like a bonfire and two Olympic flames are lit on Friday evening.
Vladimir Putin will not end the all-out war he started after the last Winter Games. It will suddenly no longer be possible to keep up with Donald Trump’s fluctuations. The conflicts in the world will not stop just because the Winter Olympics are taking place.
But for a few weeks Thousands of athletes will meet and compete in a neutral format to demonstrate the great strength of the sport. The operating system is distributed. From Milan, up to Italian mountain villages and, fittingly, you always feel cut off from the world up here. The ski families at my hotel in Moena give off the feeling of a sports holiday rather than the Olympics.
Before the games, she admitted how troubling it was that ICE agents had to work with security.
The Olympic movement has a new supreme leader. Ahead of the Games, Kirsty Coventry has admitted how disturbing it is to learn that ICE agents will be working with the security of the US delegation and that the Epstein documents have implications for the Olympics because the head of the upcoming Summer Olympics is involved.
Norway will try to win the gold league when the royal family is a house of cards at home.
Russian and Ukrainian athletes must compete against each other while the countries are at war.
The conflicting countries Canada and the United States will try to win the two ice hockey gold medals.
And Lindsey Vonn and Jessie Diggins will try to block thoughts of what happened in their home state of Minnesota.
Kirsty Coventry’s words may sound like platitudes, but this time they hit the spot:
– We don’t operate in a vacuum, but we do sport, and that means we have to keep sport at a neutral level. In a world of increasing division, these principles are more important than ever.
The naive hope has been heard before.
Pope Leo
He is more right when he speaks of the Games’ potential to “promote the true values of sport.” Loyalty, respect, team spirit, willingness to sacrifice.
Sport is also emotions, relaxation, escape, seriousness, beauty, betrayal, comfort, joy, sadness, community, support, losers, money, passion, politics and winners.
Nobody falls in love with sport because of its social power. It is the electrical charge at the moment of competition that ignites the flame.
When DN met Frida Karlsson For a pre-Olympic report, she told how something grew inside her when it came to hanging on top of the schoolyard. “The urge to compete and measure yourself and the thrill you get from it.”
She compares these competitions to the battle of ski stars on the slopes.
– It doesn’t really matter who gets from A to B the fastest. It’s a make-believe world, but we still somehow create value in it.
The value increases when you wish that much of what happens in the real world were fake.
Read more from Johan Esk here.
