Governments don’t back sport simply for its economic value. They back it because it provides such a powerful tool for nation-building.
Spectators, on the other hand, love sport because it offers mythic lessons in the great themes of life. Sport is about the rewards of courage, self-discipline and faith in oneself. Sport is unflinching proof that every hero’s fate – and by association our own — is ultimately one of defeat either by an opponent, by circumstance or by age. Sport reveals that victory and defeat balance the same equation, that there cannot be one without the other and that it’s important for the winner to honour the loser. Sport teaches humility. Sport demonstrates that time is the master of all. Sport reminds us that we all live in the fleeting moment and that at some point we, too, must arrive at that one last moment that is all we have and all we will ever have. Sport affirms the moment’s value.
The public response to sport is a measure of its importance.
Approximately half the population of the planet is expected to watch the Vancouver and Whistler Olympics on television. This audience isn’t coerced, it is self-selecting. The audience alone reflects a degree of interest that opponents of sport as spectacles prefer to ignore.
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