The Olympics is a ten year old boy in front of a t.v. screen in 1972, watching the drama of the Munich Games, Watching Dave Wottle coming from last place on the backstretch of the last lap. The silly white cap he forgot to remove making its way, almost magically, past every single runner until at last the dream he had chased was attained.  And the Olympics is that same young boy watching hooded figures with rifles on the balcony of the Israeli wrestling team's rooms, their bodies being carried later across the tarmac, and the Games attempting to stagger on afterward. The Olympics is that boy now grown, taking his nephew, now ten years old, to watch the 1996 Games.  They watch together, as the Uncle dreams of the boy he was at ten and wonders what remains today of the things he dreamed of then, as the nephew dreams of taking his place someday upon the pinnacle, upon the field of play and atop the medal stand. The Olympics is a dancer in his mid-thirties, newly recovering from crack addiction, coming to Atlanta for a second chance in his career, performing in the Cultural Olympiad.  The Olympics is Rodin's glorious sculpture, "The Kiss," coming to the High Museum for the summer. The Olympics is the fact of competition carried to its furthest extreme. It is the competition of the athletes, their coaches and committees, and the competition of the capitalist system to make the most money possible from competition. There is something about one human pitted against another which is fundamentally wrong and fundamentally right.  At rhythmic gymnastics championships, exquisite art can almost ruined by the ugliness of the focus upon scoring, and competing.  There is something about competitive scoring that is anathema to the spirit of art.  But then, at the freestyle wrestling World Championships, an Iranian and a Georgian pitted against each, fight in a terrible struggle, with an intensity and beauty which neither could ever have known without the resistance of the other. The Iranian won, as thousands of Iranian fans went completely nuts--men and women, young and old, consumed with joy for the triumph of a national hero in their national sport. The victor took his place on the medal stand next to and above his opponent, as the flag of Iran was raised to the playing of the Iranian National Anthem. It wasn't about one man's victory; it was about the real possibility for each of us to follow our dreams, leave the standards and norms of the world behind, and become the things we dreamed of as children.  The flag and the anthem were not about one nation's dominion over others.  The implicit sentiment was that if we can compete against each other, and lift each other up in the process, if we can stand and recognize each others heritage, identity, and heroes, then perhaps we can abstain from annihilating each other. The Olympics is rather a nifty paradigm, not only for global drama, but for the individual human experience as well.  The Olympics invites, nay compels, us to choose whether we will emulate the sellers and consumers of the Games, or whether we will emulate the athletes, and pursue our dreams with every last ounce of what we are.                        Based on an article written by Dave Sloan
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