Newsletter of the Pan American Fencing Confederation
Now that we are starting the road to Tokyo is time for a reflection on how our journey should be in the midst of increasingly complex global environments. The road should start by clearly setting a vision of goals and of the process to reach them, but always keeping in mind the commitment to the Olympic Movement and its Charter, yes, for the sake of Fair Play, but also for the need of preparation for the modern challenges and tremendous pressures athletes, and societies in general have to face nowadays. But why should we care, right? Let’s see…
Celebrating the Rio 2016 magnificent expressions we all witnessed of fair play, courage, skillfulness, and so on, is natural, however, like it or not, we must be aware of the fact that international sports are part of a very complex system of interrelationships where the unexpected is always likely to happen due to the links to social, economic and nearly all sort of contexts, creating situations telling us that Olympic records and medals are not all there is.
Still, Fair Play, sportsmanship and messages of hope and opportunity should be the persistent behavior and language of the global culture of Olympism which is defined by the International Olympic Committee as “Olympism: A philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind”.
The key word, in life as in the fencing piste, is balance, in all its meaningful expressions. Under the light of Olympism and balance, training and developing Olympic Champions is a much more complex process than perfecting physical strength and fencing technique.