United States Sports Academy - "America's Sports University"

Since its origins, the Olympic Movement has always wished to associate the movements of sport with the thought processes linked to cultural activity, be it sculpture, paintings, literature, music or architecture. At the start of the third millennium, this desire clearly remains as relevant as ever, and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne is a living illustration of this.

It is particularly significant that, in the framework of the reforms recently carried out by the International Olympic Committee, its Commission for Olympic Culture and Education has invited a number of internationally renowned specialists to meet to share their thoughts about the development of its cultural policy.

We would like to thank them for their invaluable contribution and wish the numerous participants a pleasant stay in Lausanne, Olympic capital.

Juan Antonia Samaranch President of the International Olympic Committee

It is often said and repeated that Olympism is sport and culture. This is not a simple definition, it is a programme that is constantly developing. The cultural dynamism of the IOC and the Olympic Movement is conveyed periodically at Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies, during all events organized a this magnificent Olympic Museum which hosts our Forum today, and in the actions carried out by the Cultural Commission which has recently merged with another IOC Commission to become the new Commission for Olympic Culture and Education.

Yes, culture is the second dimension of Olympism and the IOC gives and will always give culture the importance it deserves, in accordance with its fundamental principles.

This Forum, the second we have organized, on a theme dear to our founder Pierre de Coubertin, will make us think about the IOC's cultural policy. Given that the time to do so is limited, we will give priority to considering the future.

I thank the speakers and participants in this Forum for pursuing with us the ongoing consideration of the IOC's cultural policy.

He Zhenliang
IOC Executive Board Member
Chairman of the Commission for Culture and Olympic Education

Speaking both as a Coubertin biographer and as a professional cultural anthropologist, my analysis will consist largely of an up-date of what the founder already understood, and understood perhaps better than many of his successors do today.

The hegemonic of "default" conception of culture that still dominated Olmypic Lausanne today may be dangerously narrow and seriously out of touch with the "cultures of ‘culture'" dominant or emergent in other sectors and regions of contemporary world affairs.

Coubertin has thoroughly deconstructed the monolithic humanistic understanding of culture as cultivation into several different aspects and formulations. Culture is not only fine arts, but also folk arts, crafts, and music. Culture is language and poetics. Culture is also the logic of social organization, multiple conceptions of life, and systems of belief.

As far back as Geometric times, athletic exercise, music and dance constituted the three basic elements in the education of the young Athenians. The education of the young people of Athens had one central goal: to train them to grasp a sense of rhythm and control of harmony which would enable them to achieve the harmonious development of the body and the mind.

In modern societies, establishing a harmonious interaction between the physical and intellectual functions is considered a major challenge. The effort for developing such an interaction needs to be continuous and methodological. It needs to address the distinct characteristics of sports and culture and at the same time attempt to blend them. It needs to take advantage of the Information society which introduces new prospects in culture and education. It needs to address issues related to globalization and resist to the trends of the global market. And finally it needs to be linked with important events of global interest and significance. Events which are in line with Olympism and Olympic values.

In the human species individuals are born cultureless. Ancient Greeks successfully used sport in building up their brilliant civilizations. Impacts of culture and education on sport are undeniable. Sport is not only the exalting of physical activities. "To place everywhere sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of the human dignity", as Olympism suggest, must be done.

So
Olympism = Sport + Education + Culture

All sports are full of certain cultural symbols and messages. It needs to disseminate through sport cultural values and, in the Olympic Movement, that is to avoid the cultural homogenization, to favour a policy linking sport with culture and education, by encouraging education programs, universities and sport institutions.

It is not only to give sports an artistic overlook and make them more elegant, but also helpful in refining basic nature of sport and enhancing their value.

Of the three components of this topic: sport, culture and education, culture is the most important and the most basic. Distinct cultures are passed on without being expressly taught. Education is the process through which cultures continue to exist.

In traditional societies, sport and games developed from daily activities. Many of these activities were functional. The diverse societies in the world have over a period of time evolved what they identify as the sports enshrined in their cultural and educational values.

Currently in Zambia, there are two kinds of sport. The first is made up of the successors to the traditional games, widely played, which are purely social and recreational. The second is that of games that are originally from other countries. These sports were introduced in schools and in community centres, mainly in urban areas. A new aspect of competition was introduced with these sports as players were rewarded for winning. These sports which developed out of the cultures which devised them, were introduced into Zambian systems of culture and education.

Since Seoul 1998, our research group at the University of Mainz has examined, inter alia, how the ideas of Coubertin and the Olympic Games are reflected int hee experience of young people.

In addition to the philosophical interpretation and educational application of Olympism, art, with its opportunities for "expressive symbolization", is another of its essential elements. To what extent and how well this has been acknowledged has been the subject of little scientific analysis. Any discussion of the relationship between sport and culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture or to a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two systems.

Sport itself has aesthetic qualities, which ensures closeness to artistic productions. Sportswear and equipment are becoming increasingly aestheticized. The experience of sports architecture and the opening and closing ceremonies on television or at the stadium is setting new cultural trends. By and large, each foreign visitor has a considered encounter with the culture of the Games' organizers.

As the title suggests, my intention is to present "Culture live on Internet" - a challenge in itself. There can be no question of confining it to a traditional, concept-based discussion, albeit with the aid of slides. A new approach is required, which can be outlined as follows:

1. This paper (or rather the text, its written expression) will form not the ideas involved as a whole, but the main thread of the experience we are about to share;
2. This means that the screen (or pages of this publication) is no longer simply a place intended for illustration and documentation; it offers sites that we will open and consult together in real time;
3. The innovation involves breaking with the limits of a traditional debate and opening it up, outside those limits, to the whole network;
4. Finally, it is essential to bear in mind that internet is evolving continually, at a speed hitherto unknown, and that the outcome - cyberculture - is being transformed almost as we speak;
5. Which means we need to be prepared to break with our mental habits and open up to those required by the experience of the "Net".

Let's be frank, and not fear words:

• cultured people/intellectuals, are normally classed as "boring" or, at best, "utopian";
• sports people, devoted to the development of excellence in physical performance, supposedly do not make much use of reason or thought processes.

The power of the media and the world's leaders have long since categorized culture and sport - they are pure divertimento!

The media devote to each of these two worlds a specific area, a "ghetto" for a privileged few. And they get away with it.

The world's leaders, in their own way, do the same thing, with the exception of electoral campaigns, where the brilliance of sports heroes and those of art and literature should shine over their own images, which compels them to be seen frequenting these heroes!!