The Olympics is a meeting of the great athletes from every corner of the globe. The best athletes in every nation go to the Olympic games to pit their superiority against that of other nations in order to decide who among them is the cream of the crop.
Nations with the right attitude and spirit go to the Olympics to make known to the whole world their greatness through the performance of their athletes in different individual and team events they participate in. They don’t go the Olympics merely for demonstrating their spirit of friendliness for that’s politicking, nor for the sake of telling everyone, “Hey, look, we’re participating” for that’s junket. They go there to prove that they, as a nation, are winners. Champions.
And to make sure they have a firm grip on championship, these nations prepare their athletes years in advance, not just inside the four-year waiting period until the next Olympic games. They give them the best trainers and coaches, provide them with the best facilities they can afford, feed them the best health food they could give, and constantly motivate them to be the best. They measure athletes’ training performance against recorded performance in past Olympic games and strive to consistently break the record while on training. They give them the winning form by the time they’re ripe for the Olympics.
The symbol of an Olympic champion is the gold medal. The nations that seek to be champions go for the gold and no other. Well, they know that sometimes they make a haul of silver and bronze medals but that’s not what they want. Silver and bronze are symbols of runners-up, not champions. A nation that goes to the Olympics unsure of its probability of winning gold is better off staying at home and watching the games on TV.
At the end of the games, the nation that gathers the most number of gold medals earns the right to be called the Greatest. We’re talking here of real gold medals, as contrasted with token ones given out for events categorized as “demonstration events”.
For the nation that gathers no real medal at all, what description does it earn?
