Thought for the Week: Role models
Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on the impact of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
The Olympics and the Paralympics were more than just a defining chapter in the story of British sport. They raised important social issues, challenged perceptions and prompted reflection. ‘They were a tonic’, someone said to me, as if society had been ill and we were in need of a ‘pick me up’. It had been and we were.
Britain was struggling under a bleak cloud of economic recession. People also felt let down by many at the highest levels of society. Some leaders in finance, banking, politics and journalism had lost their moral compass and seemed ‘out of touch’ and remote. Collectively ‘under the weather’, we were offered the medicine of sport and the extensive media coverage had a healing effect: an ambitious and risky enterprise was validated, a people unified and a feeling of wellbeing promoted.
One of the most interesting aspects of the television coverage was that viewers were exposed, every day, to decent, extremely engaging, courteous, ordinary people. They were, of course, extraordinary in being elite Olympic and Paralympic athletes, but there was a sense in which the sportsmen and women, being interviewed before or after their events, seemed very much like the people who live on your street. They were not aloof. Their talent and dedication, of course, set them apart, but their constant presence on our screens had a cumulative, uplifting, effect.
Television has, in recent years, come to be something of a distorted mirror of society. More and more airtime seems given over to cynicism and celebrity – to people who crave their moment on the haunted fish tank. It is a world of odd role models – and values – and suddenly we had very different ones.
The appearance of Olympic and Paralympic sportsmen and women on our screens really was a ‘tonic’. Their lack of pretention and genuine humility, the shrug of the shoulder when the words ‘sacrifices made’ and ‘bravery’ cropped up, and, most movingly, the sincerity and depth of gratitude given to those who had helped them on their journey was inspiring. The sordid headlines of early summer, which had reflected the uncertainties of our time and revealed the worst of human nature and behaviour, were banished from the front pages.
We now had the inspiring example of ordinary people – extraordinarily gifted ordinary people – being themselves: decent, modest, sometimes tongue-tied, down-to-earth and thankful. The way most people are. The sport was compelling and exhilarating; but the interviews gave us glimpses and insights into the best of human nature. It was refreshing. It is a pity we do not see it more often on the front pages of our newspapers and on our television screens. The values these sportsmen and women exemplified were so different from those of some bankers, journalists, politicians and celebrities; people who often seem distracted by a desire for money or status or fame.
This, for me, was the light that came through Britain, that people in July had waited for in cities, towns, villages and hamlets, that shone brightly in the Olympic arena and that will be carried on to Rio. This light is the symbol for a truth – an enduring, eternal, spiritual and positive truth that the Olympic and Paralympic athletes embodied – the innate goodness and enormous potential of every human being.
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