What is the Olympic spirit?

Under the background of the Olympic movement, "Olympic spirit" has a special meaning. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a passage in the "Olympism Principle" clause of its Olympic Charter: "Everyone should enjoy the possibility of engaging in sports without any form of discrimination, and embody the Olympic spirit of mutual understanding, friendship, unity and fair competition". Obviously, the Olympic spirit endowed by the Olympic Charter is "mutual understanding, friendship, unity and fair competition".

The Olympic spirit plays a very important guiding role in the Olympic movement.

First of all, the Olympic spirit emphasizes fair treatment and understanding of cultural differences. The Olympic movement is an international movement, which inevitably faces various cultural differences in the world and various problems caused by it. Athletes, coaches, sports officials and spectators from different countries have different skin colors, wear different clothes, speak different languages, have different lifestyles, perform different religious ceremonies and express their joys and sorrows in different ways. These ethnic and cultural differences are often strengthened by conflicts between countries in political system, economic system and ideology. In a sense, the quadrennial Olympic Games concentrates all the sports cultures in the world in a narrow space and time range, so the differences between different cultures are particularly striking. Difference is contradiction, and contradiction may lead to conflict. The Olympic spirit emphasizes mutual understanding, friendship and unity in order to form a spiritual atmosphere. In this atmosphere, people can get rid of the prejudice brought by their own culture. In the display of different cultures, what they see is not contradictions and conflicts, but the cultural landscape of human society, which makes cultural differences become the driving force for people to communicate, rather than their own closed barriers; Let contradictions become the driving force of mutual learning, not the inducement of mutual contempt. Only in this atmosphere can people break the narrow vision, learn and understand things outside their own nation with the broad mind of world citizens, realize that all ethnic groups have magical imagination and great creativity, learn to respect other ethnic groups, treat others and themselves with a more objective and fair attitude, absorb the excellent elements of other cultures with an open mind, and constantly enrich themselves, so as to truly realize the international exchange advocated by the Olympic Movement.

Secondly, the Olympic spirit emphasizes the fairness and justice of competitive sports. The Olympic movement takes competitive sports as its main activity content, and the most essential characteristics of competitive sports are competition and confrontation. In the direct and fierce physical confrontation and competition, athletes' bodies, psychology and morality have been well exercised and cultivated, and the audience has also received sensory entertainment and subtle education. However, the basic premise of the educational function and cultural entertainment function of competitive sports is fair competition. Only on the basis of fair competition can competition be meaningful, athletes from all countries can maintain and strengthen the United and friendly relationship, and the Olympic Movement can achieve its sacred goals. Like the late American famous black track and field athlete Jesse? Owens said, "In sports, people learn not only competition, but also respect for others, life ethics, how to spend their lives and how to treat their peers."

The Olympic spirit was put forward by Pierre De Coubertin. In order to introduce a vibrant new education system to the motherland, Coubertin devoted himself to studying different contemporary education systems and the history of ancient Greece since he was a teenager. He hopes that French youth can accept a new education system, that is, to strengthen moral cultivation and confidence, while exercising and cultivating courage and strong personality.

Through the investigation of the ancient Olympic Games, Coubertin realized that the ancient Greeks organized competitions not only to exercise their physique and show spectacular scenes, but also to educate people. He believes that sports competitions can temper people's will, cultivate people's character and exercise people at the same time.