Letters from the Founders

Question

The Olympic Truce for the modern Games is a utopia – it cannot be applied because conditions in the world today are different than 3000 years ago – And even then the extend to which truce was applied in ancient Greece is questionable.

Answer

3000 years ago the human race was composed of dreamers and pragmatists; warmongers and Peace activists, Poets and Physicists, Rich and Poor – Kings and servants – Traders and Artisans.

Today none of these elements are any different than 3000 years ago. And none I personally believe will be any different in the future.

Our world will always have a variety of people all living and aspiring their dreams simultaneously and many times in diametrically opposite directions.

The truce provided that everyone could attend and participate in their own way – And the rules of the Games reduced Rank; economic position etc to an absolute level – playing field for the competitors; so the best could be proclaimed victors.

In today’s Games Truce the Father and Mother of the eternal Olympic spirit is quite alive and well – albeit IGNORED!! By the media and the masses.
We believers though seen it; we saw it most vividly at the Sydney Games.

There two warring countries – forming one nation decided to HOLD THE TRUCE for fifteen days and go to the Games in Peace with their armies still facing each other across the demilitarized zone – in the Korean Peninsula while their Olympians took the Olympic Oath and paraded and competed together in Peace under the eyes of the whole world.

These Olympians practiced the Ancient Olympic Truce Law.

We congratulate the two Korean governments and their respective Olympic Committees for their vision and ask them to practice the Olympic Truce they dreamed of at the Sydney Olympics in all future Olympiads

To the Korean nation!

We appreciate any comments!

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Letters from the Founders

Letters from the Founders

The modern Olympic games is a truly International gathering of athletes who come together to compete – and choose the best in their chosen field.

In this respect the slogan citius, altious, fortius truly represents this aspect of the Games.

But the Olympic games are indeed more than just that. The Games have a social aspect, bringing together millions of people as spectators and thousand of others as volunteers.

The games also have an economic aspect for the athletes, the host city, the local and international business; they even have a political aspect – ranging from apartheid (Montreal) to exclusion of athletes due to their origin (Berlin)to murder of athletes (Munich) and to boycott (Moscow) and (Los Angeles).

Naturally whenever any one of these different aspects of the games faulters the games themselves and the Olympic spirit suffers.

In The ancient tradition the glue that held all these aspects of the games together was the Olympic Law of Truce; given by the Oracle at Delphy to Iphitous, Lycourgos and Pisa the law commanded that the games be held under conditions of peace. This law made the distant trip to Olympia and back, for visitors and athletes of combating cities, safe .

Mimicking the Gods the law temporarily elevated human dignity by setting aside vengeance animosity and anger .

The vision of the Monument of the Immortals is to revive the Olympic law of truce by building a monument to be the temple for the idea of “peace during the Olympic games” and foster thoughts and actions of modern olympians that nurture this olympic spirit.

The monument will honor the Olympian victors by having their name inscribed in their native language as a testament to their abiding by the Olympic Law of Truce. It will also provide all Olympians with a venue to articulate for future generations their very personal feeling and experiences of the Olympic spirit of the games, finally the monument will showcase these feelings to the visitor and subliminally challenge him to honor the Olympic truce during the Olympic games.

This was the way the ancients safe guarded their games.- this is the only way we shall be able to safe guard the modern Olympics both from terrorists and political bickering. The new slogan shall be citius, altius, fortius under conditions of Peace.