Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together
By Jason Light
Image: Drax the Wolfhound enjoying the Olympics
I absolutely love the Olympics, there is nothing that brings more of the world together and in times like this we need that more than ever. On the surface you could says its just lots of people trying to beat each other at something, apparently slightly meaningless, an adult version of children trying to work out who can jump over the river the best.. but to me it means so much more and has some wonderful parallels with the dog sector.
Before I go on I need to address the obvious link this year between the Olympics and animal welfare. Just days before Paris a Team GB athlete was, rightly, thrown out of the equestrian competitions due to their approach to “training” horses. I used to love cross country running with our late collie Jack, so have experienced, first hand, the special bond that comes from doing sport with your canine companion. But if you are competing in any competition with another sentient being, their needs must come first and you should never loose sight of this… Some of my favourite moments watching agility have been people advocating for their “team mate”, by walking out the ring when they realise their furry friend just isn’t into it that day.
Whilst being a massive sports fan helps, I’m not ashamed to say that, I found this last few weeks incredibly emotional, I basically cried my way through the Olympics with tears of joy, excitement and sorrow for watching people reach the highest of highs as well as having their hearts broken.
Higher - Together
The Olympics motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter”, which in English translates to “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”. Amazingly after 100 years this year was the first to have the word “together” added, but it highlights what’s so special about the four yearly occasion.
I could spend hours writing about why I love the Olympics so much and how pertinent it is to PACT and the wider dog training sector, but the official website sets it out perfectly… If you don’t think that the sector could learn a lot from the Olympics, read this with the sector in mind.
The three values of olympism are excellence, respect and friendship. They constitute the foundation on which the olympic movement builds its activities to promote sport, culture and education with a view to building a better world.
The original values of Olympism as expressed in the Olympic Charter were to “encourage effort”, “preserve human dignity” and “develop harmony”.
Over time, they have evolved and are now expressed in more contemporary terms as:
- Striving for excellence and encouraging people to be the best they can be.
- Demonstrating respect in many different manners: respect towards yourself, the rules, your opponents, the environment, the public, etc.
- Celebrating friendship, which is quite unique to the Olympic Games – an event that brings people together every few years.
This is the idea of setting your rivalries aside. There is more that unites us than divides us.
Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
Faster - Together
Unless you are in a Slow Cycling Race (not an Olympic sport, but it should be!!), the objective is always to go faster, jump higher, score more technical points than your competitors or, maybe even break that national record set 50 years ago.. its all about moving forwards.
Elite sports and competition is a fantastic example of society progressing with:
Embracing science - To paraphrase a the late US comedian Bill Hicks, you can throw away all those gold medals if you don’t embrace the science, all of those athletes are “real high on science”. The perfect example of the scientific method, it doesn’t matter if you think you’re right, “that’s the way we’ve always done it” isn’t going to stop the next person beating you to the top podium spot.
Fair play - Everything in sport is bound by rules, but it easy to forget how steeped in ethics they are. Whilst you may win today by being underhand, that won’t go unnoticed and almost certainly won’t help you in the long run.
Dignity - The 2024 Olympics was the first with gender parity, the same number of male and female medals on offer and every one of them equal in value. Closer to home, the Animal Behaviour and Training Council (ABTC) just published a new events guide to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Dog sector, its something we’ve been passionate about for some time and have being using to improve Dogx this year.
Image: Sharon pointing to her Rio tattoo after winning gold - Credit Sharon’s instagram account
Stronger - Together
Like all our heroes, their seemingly inhuman achievements can make it easy to forget that Olympians are just normal people, all with their own challenges in life to overcome. A reminder of this was Sharon van Rouwendaal, the Dutch athlete dedicating her Gold medal in the marathon swim to her late canine companion Rio. After winning she spoke to the BBC about the recent loss of Rio, her struggles with grief and motivation (you can watch the video here).
In the spring before the London 2012 Olympics I attended a talk by Chris Boardman hosted by the engineering department at the University of Southampton. Having led the design of much of Team GB’s equipment this was a major coup for the Uni, unfortunately for them Chris focused most of his talk on what he saw as the biggest marginal gain, teamwork, even getting the whole audience up to participate in group exercises. We have all been that “all the gear and no idea” person at points in our life, it’s at these moments when the people around us become the greatest asset. Next time you strive to go Faster, Higher, be stronger, remember that none of us can achieve anything without doing it together, without that it’s meaningless.
Image: Bob really not that into the Olympics closing ceremony
As this competition closes I am reminded of how everything must constantly strive to reach higher, for the Olympics that could be new sports like flag football, adaptions such as cycling added to the Modern Pentathlon, or brining back and refreshing classics such as squash all coming in 2028. Next time you’re flabbergasted at how slow it can be for things to progress in the dog sector, just think it took Squash nearly 200 years to become an Olympic sport.
So that’s it, the first half of the 2024 Olympics is over and I now have two weeks to recover before I jump back on the emotional roller coaster of the Paralympics.