Skip to footer
Joy
The Monitor's View

Why this Olympics feels festive

The pandemic’s impact on the last Games has put many athletes and fans in a grateful, celebratory mood for the Summer Olympics in Paris.

|
AP
Greek Olympic gold medalist Antigoni Ntrismpioti, left, and Gabriella Papadakis, French Olympic champion ice dancer, pass the Olympic flame at Panathenaic stadium in Athens, April 26.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

Soon after Olympic swimmer Lydia Jacoby won her first gold medal in 2021 at the Tokyo Games, she graced the winners’ podium in a white tracksuit, her red hair tied up in a bun and her face hidden – under an N95 mask. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the American athlete had to place the medal around her neck herself. With family members banned from attending, her parents watched her on TV from Florida.

What a difference three years makes. The pandemic is over and Paris will be hosting this year’s Summer Olympics. Fans from around the world can visit the Games, bursting with pride and encouragement for their favorite athletes. Athletes can cheer, hug, and smile for pictures with their parents, siblings, and friends.

Visitors to one of the world’s greatest cities can explore familiar sites, but also watch the equestrian competitions at Versailles or boxing and tennis at Roland-Garros. There is much for everyone to happily anticipate, including Ms. Jacoby.

“I’m very much looking forward to just ... hang out with everyone and not have to worry,” she says in a Monitor interview. She plans to stay in Paris after the swimming events to explore the city. This time, the experience should be what she envisioned of the Olympics as a child. She especially looks forward to the closing ceremony, saying, “I was very bummed to have to miss that last time.”

This year’s Games may be more than just a welcome return of international sports. For two weeks, the world will enjoy a respite from global strife, bringing people together to cheer, laugh, and cry for good reasons. No talk there of elections, natural disasters, or what world leaders must do to fix problems. When the first Olympic competition starts in July, it will be a signal for celebration. And the winners can again bow their heads to let someone bestow a medal.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.

 
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why this Olympics feels festive
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0426/Why-this-Olympics-feels-festive
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe