Sunday, May 25, 2008

When sport is not Healthy

The values of courage, patience, respect, humility, sacrifice and excellence that has always embodied the sport are on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing more perverted than ever. Since ancient times, all peoples and civilizations have given a special worship at the man's physical activity and sport, which is just how competitive one. From racing speed, the bloody confrontation with no arms or throwing objects, whose only reward for the winner was an olive branch, we are now observing with some astonishment and shame those who earn millions of dollars in just one athlete for image rights. The sport has become a global phenomenon, seen by all mankind, and that moves vast amounts of money. Today, wealth, public image, reputation and the obsessive quest for victory, have turned to sport for the elite and many of those involved in it and headed in an unhealthy example for young people.

The success representing professional athletes has become a lure for many young people yearning to succeed and achieve popularity and money quickly. Parents are often complicit, if not all tyrants who want to see your coastline yearnings and failures in their children. Also the authorities, who have encouraged unhealthy practices among adolescents in order to achieve sporting success to support his political ambitions. If a child took 5 hours a day to help the family business, the parents would be committing a crime. But if another child the same age, ten hours a day going into a gym and improve your muscle gaining technique sporting cause admiration.

The organization Save the Children has revealed in its latest report that this situation tends to occur with increasing frequency in all countries. The host of the Olympics this year is one of the states that violate the Olympic spirit and philosophy. China has developed methods Spartans with an army of athletes whose sole purpose is vital to achieve a metal hung from the neck. Gymnast girls are taken from their homes, with the consent of their parents to live in a regime of slavery, from its best years in a gym and an improper diet of a child. The winner of four medals in Munich'72 with 15 years of age, Shane Gould says that the Olympic movement tries to younger athletes as pawns. "

As children are almost always the most affected by the demands of today's society. Many children of sub Saharan Africa is embarking on dangerous journeys through the desert and in small boats in the hope of calling in the quarries of Real Madrid, Milan, Ajax Amsterdam and Lyon. The best clubs in Europe are responsible for bringing in talented young Africans plane, who then abandoned to their fate if they fail to meet expectations, without a job without training and without papers they can stay in Europe. Footballers are a big influence on society. His way of playing is admired by all, but so is their way of dressing, talking, and living. If athletes are trained as full and ripe, with the smallest cultural and historical knowledge of the countries through which they move, and become that positive influence and beneficial to the young.

The Olympic motto "Citius, Altius, Fortius" Faster, higher, stronger, perhaps should be changed to "More beautiful, more humane, better," as proposed by the philosopher and educator José María Cagigal sport. Because the sport is, as the French writer Jean Giraudoux, the esperanto of all races, and we must not forget that in the Olympic event that will live in a few days there will be children of all ages who have not enjoyed his childhood, and probably feel disoriented in adulthood.

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