The Olympic spirit refers to the spirit of mutual understanding, friendship, unity, and fair competition.
Its connotation includes emphasizing tolerance and understanding of cultural differences, forming a spiritual atmosphere of mutual understanding, friendship, and unity, as well as ensuring the fairness and justice of competitive sports. This spirit aims to educate the youth through sports activities without any discrimination and with the Olympic spirit - mutual understanding in the spirit of friendship and unity, thereby contributing to the establishment of a peaceful and better world.
The concentrated embodiment of the Olympic spirit is striving and struggling, and "higher, faster, stronger" is its most concentrated expression. It means not only to carry forward the fearless spirit and dare to struggle and win in the face of strong opponents in the arena, but also to never be satisfied with oneself, constantly overcome oneself, and impact new limits.
The Olympic spirit has a long history of evolution. The ancient Olympic Games originated in ancient Greece, and its competitive model and Olympic ideals and spirit have had a profound impact on modern sports. The connotation of the ancient Olympic spirit is peace and friendship, fair competition, the pursuit of physical fitness and striving. In the 19th century, sports grounds began to spread worldwide, and sports tended to internationalization. The French educator Pierre de Coubertin proposed to hold competitions similar to the ancient Olympic Games and expand them to a global scale, and he is also known as the founder of the modern Olympic Games and the proponent of the modern Olympic spirit. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Olympic spirit had further development. After entering the 20th century, the proposals of new mottos such as "more clean, more human, and more united" have enriched its content.
The Olympic spirit has important significance and value. For society, it promotes the circulation of sports events worldwide and facilitates the development of human sports and cultural undertakings; for athletes, its moral education function helps enhance athletes' ideological and moral cultivation, patriotic enthusiasm, physical and mental health, and humanistic quality, helps them form an international perspective, international thinking, and an optimistic and positive attitude, and also enables athletes to possess excellent qualities such as a sense of responsibility.
In the context of the Olympic movement, the primary form of the Olympic spirit is the Olympic movement, which is open to all social strata, regardless of gender, age, or sports level, aiming at participation. The Olympic Games is another form of the Olympic spirit, and the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games jointly ensure the realization of the Olympic spirit, and the two are inseparable.
The relevant principles of the Olympic spirit include the principles of participation, competition, fairness, friendship, and struggle. The principle of participation is the foundation, and the motto "participation is more important than winning" has been widely accepted; the principle of competition indicates that the Olympic movement is a social activity that advocates challenges and competitions; the principle of fairness is the code of conduct for participating in Olympic competitions; the principle of friendship is the purpose of the Olympic movement, aiming to bring together people of different countries, races, languages, and religious beliefs through sports activities, enhance understanding and friendship; the principle of struggle is the soul of the Olympic spirit, requiring people to have the indomitable spirit of progress and the heroic spirit of overcoming difficulties.
For example, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea broke the slowest record in the 100-meter freestyle of the Olympic Games with a result of "1 minute 52 seconds 72". The swimming pool where he trained was only more than ten meters long before the official competition. After the start of the competition, two players in the same group jumped the gun and were disqualified, while he managed to finish the race with a not-so-standard dog-paddle style. At first, the audience laughed at him because of his speed and swimming style, but later were impressed by his perseverance and gave him applause. "The Flying Fish" Thorpe once commented, "This is the Olympic spirit." Although this result is the slowest record, it embodies the Olympic spirit of never giving up and being friendly to each other.
In general, the Olympic spirit is a universal concept, and the principles and values it contains set an example for people in sports and other fields of life, encouraging them to pursue excellence and surpass themselves, while promoting international understanding, friendship, and unity.