There has been plenty of negative coverage of the Olympics – yes, we may have also moaned a little bit. There are plenty of un-Olympic things about the Olympics.* There are plenty of more efficient ways the money could have been spent, and I am sure that there are lots of other places that many people would have preferred that amount of money to be spent. HOWEVER…
It is here, the money has been spent, moaning isn’t going to stop it.
Smile. Embrace. Enjoy.
We are going to embrace the Olympic spirit and hope to soak up as much of the multiculturalism, amazing athletic feats and lovely stories of success and bravery that we can over the next month. The great thing about the Olympics – for me – is that they are a showcase of the world and all of the wonderful different people that make it up.
The world of sport will feature favourites in long distance running from eastern Africa, sprinting from the Caribbean, weightlifting from Iran and cycling from Britain. This mixture of favourites reflects beautifully what is wonderful about the world. Different people will excel from different places, because they are all basically starting with a level playing field and excelling at what their talent and hard work allows them to. Athletes are not going to succeed or fail because of who they are friends with, or the text message votes in a popularity contest. This spirit, of a level playing field, hard work and talent succeeding, is so often lacking in other pursuits and at other times.
This is the Olympic spirit and we will be cheering on people from all over the world and are very grateful that our home will be host to people from all over the world. This Olympic spirit we embrace at Danaqa. We aim to provide people, with amazing talent, from all over the world a fair playing field and with an opportunity to compete. We encourage the underdog and (like the Olympics – but on a much small scale) provide the platform for them to compete, show the world their talent.
A lot has been made about how this is a great opportunity for London to show of all that is good about itself. I couldn’t agree more – this is a great opportunity for a wonderful city to show off its own multiculturalism, to show off its fairness and to show how amazing things can happen when the right principles and foundations are provided.
Enjoy –and if you are in London come and see what a Danaqa Olympic experience feels like – we are based in Notting Hill.
*one last little moan – the only one major issue with the Olympics that I still have is the over-pandering to corporate sponsors for an event that promotes ‘fairplay’ and a level playing field – the pandering is done because of financial commitments, but surely the £10 billion in financing the UK government put in dwarfs any of the other sponsors and means ownership over them really lies with UK taxpayers not five or six corporations.
