GHANA yesterday joined the world to celebrate the spirit of the Olympics as the 29th summer Olympic Games opened in Beijing with a breathtaking opening ceremony at the Olympic stadium in front of an estimated 90,000 spectators. The event was graced by 80 world leaders including our President J. A. Kufuor. Other leaders were U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; US President George W. Bush; French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian Premier Vladimir Putin.
For the next 16 days, the eyes of the world will be on Beijing and yesterday’s opening ceremony, watched by over one billion TV audience worldwide, was indeed a feast for the eyes. The Chinese promised to stage the most spectacular Games, and yesterday their architectural masterpiece of a stadium, appropriately named Bird’s Nest, provided sights never seen before and set the stage for a showpiece event.
Often derided by the West for a plethora of ills, from political to environmental, the Chinese are determined to seize the moment to revel in their glorious past and use the universal language of sports to unleash their potential and celebrate humanity and the ideals of the Olympic Movement.
In choosing the Games slogan, ‘One World, One Dream’, the organisers hope to use the global gathering to give the world a better understanding of Chinese values. It was therefore in the spirit of sports that some of China’s fiercest critics, particularly President Bush, joined the ‘Beijing-ers’ to manifest the spirit of the slogan.
China expects to play a perfect host at the most expensive Games ever, for it is estimated that the Beijing Games cost $43 billion, dwarfing the $15 billion budget for Athens 2004. It is hoped that true sportsmanship and camaraderie will reign over other socio-political issues, scandals and controversies that often jostle for prominence in the shadows.
With 10,500 athletes from a record 204 nations chasing 302 gold medals in 28 sports, there will certainly be a high level of competition among the world’s elite sports stars battling to steal the limelight with a fistful of medals.
The Olympics is often considered to be the ultimate athletic achievement. In the intense pursuit of sporting excellence, stories of true sportsmanship shine. A greater number of participants will leave the 29th Olympiad with fond memories about a beguiling festival in Beijing but with no medal to show. Such majority epitomise the ethos of the Olympic Movement, which emphasises participation rather than winning.
It is in this spirit that the DAILY GRAPHIC urges Ghanaians not to raise their expectations too high as regards this relatively small team of nine and rather look at the essence of their participation. As they filed into the stadium, the Ghana flag for a moment caught the world’s attention as the Ghanaian contingent displayed the richness of Ghana’s Kente. That was the priceless global publicity that participating countries enjoy.
It must be heart-warming to note that after the mass boycotts of the Olympics in 1976, 1980 and 1984, boycotts now seem to be things of the past.
At present, the fight is rather against the shadowy and manipulative side of sports as a result of the inordinate desire by drug cheats to win at all cost.
The huge cost of hosting Games of this magnitude suggests that very few African cities can dream of hosting the Olympics. It requires massive investment in infrastructure that perhaps only South Africa can match at the moment.
Ghana may be nursing a dream of hosting the Games in 2032, some 24 years away, and for such a dream to become a reality the country’s rate of socio-economic development must be doubled in order to have a realistic chance of putting together a potentially successful bid.
We salute the Chinese for their hard work and the spectacular display. And for the next 16 days, sports fans look forward to nothing but the best.
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