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XXXIII Olympic Games

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PARIS : (R-L) French President Emmanuel Macron, President of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics Organizing Committee Tony Estanguet and France's Minister for Sports and Olympic and Paralympic Games visit of the "Stade Tour Eiffel" in Champ-de-Mars in Paris, France, 24 July 2024, ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games. The "Stade Tour Eiffel" will host beach volleyball and blind football games during the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Photo by Christophe PETIT TESSON / POOL / AFP)

Innumerable essays were written during schooldays; celebrated in 1948 was Major Desamanya Duncan M White’s Olympic silver medal in the 400m hurdles in London; and even more so Susanthika Jayasinghe’s bronze promoted to silver in the 200m sprint in 2000 in Sydney. Thus no surprise that interest runs high every four years when the Summer Olympic Games are held. After all, here is one event that draws the world together in holding the most attended and famed gathering of all, a sporting event aimed to be sans politics, enmity, corrosive competition. Rather is it meant to foster a coming together of all nations of the world in peace, inducing sportsmanship of the correct win or lose type; with no monetary awards given by IOC, the International Olympics Committee.

2024 Summer Olympics

in Paris is the 33rd in the new series of Olympiads and will be held from July 27 to August 5. The most remarkable coincidence, or planned conjunction when bidding took place eight years ago to host the Olympics in Paris, is that this year’s Games are a centenary celebration. France was host in 1900 and 1924. It now equals Britain’s record of hosting three Olympic Games in England: 1908, 1948 and 2012.

The motto of the current Games in French is ‘Ouvrons grand le Jeux’ which the 2024 French Olympic Games President, Tony Estanguet, says means ‘Games wide open’ with 206 nations participating in 329 events in 32 sports. Two new events have been introduced: kiteboarding and kayak crossing while a new sport – breaking or breakdancing will have athletes face off in solo dance battles. The number of participating athletes is reckoned to be 10,714. For the first time in the history of the Games, numerical gender parity would be achieved with the number of women increasing to equal that of men athletes this year.

For its mascot the French have moved away from the usual choice of an animal started in 1972 when the Munich Games had a rainbow hued dachshund. This year the mascot is a hat; not any ole hat but a Phrygian cap dating back to the 18th century when it was a symbol of freedom during the French revolution. This cap traces its ancestry to a Greek village – Phrygia 1200 BC, which featured in the Trojan War and the legend of Midas.

The opening ceremony will be along the River Seine which underwent a preparatory ten year cleaning process costing much. Thus while earlier, swimming was forbidden and no fish lived due to the poisonous nature of the river water, swimming events will be held in the Seine.

Ancient Games

Everyone, even little children, know that the Olympic Games or Olympiads originated in Olympia in ancient Greece. They were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city states and were in honour of Zeus. Aristotle dated the first as of 776 BC. They continued after Rome invaded and subjugated Greece from 86 BC. Roman General Sulla sacked Olympia but Augustus Caesar (63BC -14AD) revived the Games. Emperor Nero continued his fiddling even while overlooking the Roman Empire in Greece and introduced song and music to the Olympic competitions. The Games died a slow death and finally ceased in 393 AD, perhaps consequential to a fire that burned down the temple of the Olympian Zeus.

Also known by all is that only men participated in the games and women were not allowed even as spectators. However women crept in as winners in the chariot races when they were owners of winning chariots. The award to winners were wreaths or crowns of ivy leaves; but they earned fame in their city states and had statues built in their honour; maybe money was gifted too. Another fact is that runners, discus throwers and other athletes competed naked in the sports arena.

Revival of Games

It came to pass that Charles Pierre de Fredy, Baron de Coubertin a.k.a. Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat, educator, promoter of schools sports and historian, while graduating from the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) aimed at resurrecting the Olympic Games. He co-founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with Greek Evangelos Zappas; became its second president and restarted the holding of the four yearly Games. In his name is given a medal to athletes by the IOC who demonstrate the spirit of sportsmanship.

It was Coubertin who designed the Olympic symbol of five interlocking rings of equal dimension, coloured most often; from the left – blue, yellow, black, green and red with the yellow and green linked below the others. The rings represent the five continents; unparalleled symbol recognize worldwide by 93% of its people and having the ‘power to mobilize, catalyze and inspire’. Also by Coubertin was the motto worded: ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter’ which translates to ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together’.

The first re-invented Games were held in 1896 in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, organized mostly by co-founder Evamgelos Zappa’s cousin Konstantinos Zappas. Fourteen nations took part sending 241 athletes to compete in 43 events. It then continued being held every four years, increasing in every aspect.

The Olympic Flame that burns through the Games and lights the torch for the next games, and Torch Relay are important binding activities that set the pace for the games, bringing cohesion in the host country and publicity along the way from Athens where the relay starts to the destined place where the Games are to be held.

At the beginning of the Games oaths are sworn to by judges and athletes. They may be changed slightly each time. I quote here the athletes’ oath of the current Games: “We promise to take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules and in the spirit of fair play, inclusion and equality. Together we stand in solidarity and commit ourselves to sport without doping, without cheating, without any form of discrimination.”

Controversies, conflicts

Many a time problems have raised their troubling heads and ideals of the Games distorted. In 2008, the toxic air over Beijing had athletes and others being affected and complaining. In the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro the Zika virus attacked while complaints were lodged regards the inadequacy of facilities provided athletes at the Games in Athens 2004.

More serious was the Atlanta, Georgia, USA Games bombing of 1996 which resulted in two deaths and 112 injuries. The FBI search was much more dramatic, even catastrophic. They suspected Security Guard Richard Jewell who alerted the police of the knapsack lying on the Centennial Olympic Park. It contained a homemade bomb that exploded among spectators. Though grilled mercilessly by the FBI, Jewell maintained his plea of innocence. Five years later, the man who blew up an abortion clinic and gay nightclub, both in Atlanta, and was hiding in the Appalachian Mountains, was apprehended and admitted to placing the bomb at the Games.

Much more serious with international repercussions was the tragedy that occurred in the 1972 Munich Olympics when eight members of the Palestinian terror group Black September broke in to the Israeli team’s residence and killed one coach and one weightlifting team member who resisted them; and carried away hostages. This was on September 5. Reading about it, one realizes the Munich police were ill prepared, the army was not called in. After 20 hours of tension and horror, at the airport while the terrorists were transferring the captives to whisk them away, exchange of gunfire had 11 Israelis, 5 terrorists and a policeman killed. Three terrorists were captured. Though the Games had continued, for the first time they were suspended for one day in tribute to the dead Israeli athletes.

This year saw protests by Palestine sympathizers against Israeli bombing of Gaza and the massive destruction of human lives and territory. One considers the heavy responsibility of security personal in Paris as of now.

Who’s representing our island? Internet gave me names of three athletes scheduled to be in Paris. They are 800m runner Tharushi Karunaratne, javelin thrower Dilhani Lekamge and 400m runner Aruna Dharshana. One can never be sure of the eventual outcome. We can only hope these three dedicated and hard training young ones are in Paris settled comfortably in the Village. Whether they win medals or not does not matter; they got the chance to compete in the Olympics. I sneak in a comment that may be true: mangers who accompanied them would at least be three to one participant. Less of them going would have meant giving their berths and money spent on them to hopeful athletes, for the exposure to world sports alone. That is not the spirit of sports in SL!

The Games will go on and take place in Los Angeles in 2028. Is India bidding to host the 2032 Summer Games?

 


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Features

Maduro abduction marks dangerous aggravation of ‘world disorder’

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2026/01/8

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Venezuelan President Maduro being taken to a court in New York

The abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US special forces on January 3rd and his coercive conveying to the US to stand trial over a number of allegations leveled against him by the Trump administration marks a dangerous degeneration of prevailing ‘world disorder’. While some cardinal principles in International Law have been blatantly violated by the US in the course of the operation the fallout for the world from the exceptionally sensational VVIP abduction could be grave.

Although controversial US military interventions the world over are not ‘news’ any longer, the abduction and hustling away of a head of government, seen as an enemy of the US, to stand trial on the latter soil amounts to a heavy-handed and arrogant rejection of the foundational principles of international law and order. It would seem, for instance, that the concept of national sovereignty is no longer applicable to the way in which the world’s foremost powers relate to the rest of the international community. Might is indeed right for the likes of the US and the Trump administration in particular is adamant in driving this point home to the world.

Chief spokesmen for the Trump administration have been at pains to point out that the abduction is not at variance with national security related provisions of the US Constitution. These provisions apparently bestow on the US President wide powers to protect US security and stability through courses of action that are seen as essential to further these ends but the fact is that International Law has been brazenly violated in the process in the Venezuelan case.

To be sure, this is not the first occasion on which a head of government has been abducted by US special forces in post-World War Two times and made to stand trial in the US, since such a development occurred in Panama in 1989, but the consequences for the world could be doubly grave as a result of such actions, considering the mounting ‘disorder’ confronting the world community.

Those sections opposed to the Maduro abduction in the US would do well to from now on seek ways of reconciling national security-related provisions in the US Constitution with the country’s wider international commitment to uphold international peace and law and order. No ambiguities could be permitted on this score.

While the arbitrary military action undertaken by the US to further its narrow interests at whatever cost calls for criticism, it would be only fair to point out that the US is not the only big power which has thus dangerously eroded the authority of International Law in recent times. Russia, for example, did just that when it violated the sovereignty of Ukraine by invading it two or more years ago on some nebulous, unconvincing grounds. Consequently, the Ukraine crisis too poses a grave threat to international peace.

It is relevant to mention in this connection that authoritarian rulers who hope to rule their countries in perpetuity as it were, usually end up, sooner rather than later, being a blight on their people. This is on account of the fact that they prove a major obstacle to the implementation of the democratic process which alone holds out the promise of the prgressive empowerment of the people, whereas authoritarian rulers prefer to rule with an iron fist with a fixation about self-empowerment.

Nevertheless, regime-change, wherever it may occur, is a matter for the public concerned. In a functional democracy, it is the people, and the people only, who ‘make or break’ governments. From this viewpoint, Russia and Venezuela are most lacking. But externally induced, militarily mediated change is a gross abnormality in the world or democracy, which deserves decrying.

By way of damage control, the US could take the initiative to ensure that the democratic process, read as the full empowerment of ordinary people, takes hold in Venezuela. In this manner the US could help in stemming some of the destructive fallout from its abduction operation. Any attempts by the US to take possession of the national wealth of Venezuela at this juncture are bound to earn for it the condemnation of democratic opinion the world over.

Likewise, the US needs to exert all its influence to ensure that the rights of ordinary Ukrainians are protected. It will need to ensure this while exploring ways of stopping further incursions into Ukrainian territory by Russia’s invading forces. It will need to do this in collaboration with the EU which is putting its best foot forward to end the Ukraine blood-letting.

Meanwhile, the repercussions that the Maduro abduction could have on the global South would need to be watched with some concern by the international community. Here too the EU could prove a positive influence since it is doubtful whether the UN would be enabled by the big powers to carry out the responsibilities that devolve on it with the required effectiveness.

What needs to be specifically watched is the ‘copycat effect’ that could manifest among those less democratically inclined Southern rulers who would be inspired by the Trump administration to take the law into their hands, so to speak, and act with callous disregard for the sovereign rights of their smaller and more vulnerable neighbours.

Democratic opinion the world over would need to think of systems of checks and balances that could contain such power abuse by Southern autocratic rulers in particular. The UN and democracy-supportive organizations, such as the EU, could prove suitable partners in these efforts.

All in all it is international lawlessness that needs managing effectively from now on. If President Trump carries out his threat to over-run other countries as well in the manner in which he ran rough-shod over Venezuela, there is unlikely to remain even a semblance of international order, considering that anarchy would be receiving a strong fillip from the US, ‘The World’s Mightiest Democracy’.

What is also of note is that identity politics in particularly the South would be unprecedentedly energized. The narrative that ‘the Great Satan’ is running amok would win considerable validity among the theocracies of the Middle East and set the stage for a resurgence of religious fanaticism and invigorated armed resistance to the US. The Trump administration needs to stop in its tracks and weigh the pros and cons of its current foreign policy initiatives.

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Pure Christmas magic and joy at British School

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2026/01/8

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Students of The British High School in Colombo in action at the fashion show

The British School in Colombo (BSC) hosted its Annual Christmas Carnival 2025, ‘Gingerbread Wonderland’, which was a huge success, with the students themseles in the spotlight, managing stalls and volunteering.

The event, organised by the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), featured a variety of activities, including: Games and rides for all ages, Food stalls offering delicious treats, Drinks and refreshments, Trade booths showcasing local products, and Live music and entertainment.

The carnival was held at the school premises, providing a fun and festive atmosphere for students, parents, and the community to enjoy.

The halls of the BSC were filled with pure Christmas magic and joy with the students and the staff putting on a tremendous display.

Among the highlights was the dazzling fashion show with the students doing the needful, and they were very impressive.

The students themselves were eagerly looking forward to displaying their modelling technique and, I’m told, they enjoyed the moment they had to step on the ramp.

The event supported communities affected by the recent floods, with surplus proceeds going to flood-relief efforts.

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Features

Glowing younger looking skin

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6 hours ago

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2026/01/8

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Hi! This week I’m giving you some beauty tips so that you could look forward to enjoying 2026 with a glowing younger looking skin.

Face wash for natural beauty

* Avocado:

Take the pulp, make a paste of it and apply on your face. Leave it on for five minutes and then wash it with normal water.

* Cucumber:

Just rub some cucumber slices on your face for 02-03 minutes to cleanse the oil naturally. Wash off with plain water.

* Buttermilk:

Apply all over your face and leave it to dry, then wash it with normal water (works for mixed to oily skin).

Face scrub for natural beauty

Take 01-02 strawberries, 02 pieces of kiwis or 02 cubes of watermelons. Mash any single fruit and apply on your face. Then massage or scrub it slowly for at least 3-5 minutes in circular motions. Then wash it thoroughly with normal or cold water. You can make use of different fruits during different seasons, and see what suits you best! Follow with a natural face mask.

Face Masks

* Papaya and Honey:

Take two pieces of papaya (peeled) and mash them to make a paste. Apply evenly on your face and leave it for 30 minutes and then wash it with cold water.

Papaya is just not a fruit but one of the best natural remedies for good health and glowing younger looking skin. It also helps in reducing pimples and scars. You can also add honey (optional) to the mixture which helps massage and makes your skin glow.

* Banana:

Put a few slices of banana, 01 teaspoon of honey (optional), in a bowl, and mash them nicely. Apply on your face, and massage it gently all over the face for at least 05 minutes. Then wash it off with normal water. For an instant glow on your face, this facemask is a great idea to try!

* Carrot:

Make a paste using 01 carrot (steamed) by mixing it with milk or honey and apply on your face and neck evenly. Let it dry for 15-20 minutes and then wash it with cold water. Carrots work really well for your skin as they have many vitamins and minerals, which give instant shine and younger-looking skin.

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