The happiness with which the young swimmer Benedetta Pilato welcomed the fourth place in her individual race, just a few fractions of a second from the podium, left those spectators who think that Olympic success comes only with medals bewildered. Perhaps it may seem strange to us that men and women of sport, people who literally sacrifice their lives for the five-ring races, can say they are satisfied with a placing without a medal, but it is exactly like that and it is perfectly in line with the spirit of this splendid event.
The Olympics, in fact, are in all respects one of the greatest inventions of modern man. The late nineteenth-century idea of Pierre de Coubertin, in fact, has been carried forward over the years and, not without its problems and dark sides, has grown, has literally involved every corner of the Earth and brought to attention a very high number of sports, disciplines that often for four years do not find a minimally comparable space. It is no coincidence that football, the most widely followed sport in the world, is almost a foreign body during the Games.
So, going back to those fourth places that seem to leave a bitter taste in the mouth, we must realize that yes, the medals make us happy, but that involvement that leads us to passionately follow disciplines that for four years we have hardly heard about and whose rules we know only marginally is given precisely by the uniqueness of this event, in which we see literally hundreds of Italian athletes but other countries have symbolic representations.
An image that can be clearly seen during all the opening ceremonies, and that in Paris some solitary boats on the Seine showed clearly. For those countries, being there, beyond the placing, is a victory. If then the medals also arrive – and the Paris Games gave the first gold in their history to two small Caribbean states, such as Saint Lucia and Dominica – then it is not just a headline on a newspaper page, but the history of one’s own nation is literally written. The same could be said for those who dedicate their life to a sport that is not widely practiced, perhaps seen almost as bizarre by friends and acquaintances, and then find themselves in the name of that same sport for which they have sacrificed so much, representing their country in front of the entire world.
Maybe this is the Coubertin spirit, maybe this is exactly why, beyond rhetoric, even when a placement outside the podium can anger fans and enthusiasts, being at the Games is worth more than many other things. The more the Olympics involve all nations from every corner of the world, the more sports will be represented, and despite the doubts, controversies and perplexities that so often surround this event, the Olympic spirit will be increasingly able to excite athletes and unite people.
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