General Concept
More generally, the term "Olympic spirit" is an oft-referred-to but perhaps vaguely defined concept associated with the Olympic Games. Some media equate it with Pierre de Coubertin's statement that "The important thing is not to win, but to take part", and view athletes who try their best but finish last as epitomising the "Olympic spirit". Thus the Agence France-Presse wrote: "True Olympic spirit is often found away from gold medallists with their agents and sponsorship deals -- it is found in its purest sense in those that come last." It cited Eric Moussambani, Paula Barila Bolopa, Abdul Baser Wasiqi, Pyambuugiin Tuul, Charles Olemus, Mala Sakonninhom, Luvsanlkhündegiin Otgonbayar, Mira Kasslin and Samia Hireche as incarnations of the Olympic spirit. In 2000, CNN published an article on Eric Moussambani entitled "Olympic spirit: Swimmer competes for love of sport". In 2008, a press officer with the Chilean Tennis Federation described Nicolás Massú as having "really demonstrated the Olympic spirit: the effort, the struggle, his refusal to give up".
Read more about this topic: Olympic Spirit
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or concept:
“The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)