RMS Olympic

“ Viewed merely as a spectacle designed for public amusement, and indicating the taste of the people, the Olympic games might justly claim to be ranked far above all similar exhibitions of other nations. It could only be for the sake of a contrast, by which their general purity, innocence, and humanity would be placed in the strongest light, that they could be compared with the bloody sports of a Roman or a Spanish amphitheatre, and the tournaments of our chivalrous ancestors, examined by their side, would appear little better than barbarous shows. ”

“ Last night athletes from all over the world marched around the Olympic stadium there and stood and watched as a single torchbearer climbed the steps and lit the Olympic flame, marking the start of the games.
I'm sure that like me, you'll be proud of all of these young men and women, and particularly of our own American athletes. Our athletes are a remarkable group, not only for their achievements but for how they represent so much of what is good and beautiful and splendid about this sweet and promised land. ”

“ And these vast crowds were swayed not only by enthusiasm but by hope. At last the German eagle was to have a chance to scream. The Fatherland had not fared any too well at previous Olympic meets. The first prizes that had fallen to German athletes had been few and far between. It was not that they lacked pluck and brawn. This they had in plenty. But they had not made a specialty of field and track events and they had been forced to stand aside and see England and America make almost a clean sweep at every meet. ”

“ But whilst they encourage professional athleticism it can hardly be said that they encourage Europe to be more athletic. The Sokol movement in Czecho-slovakia and the Boy Scout movement are much more promising. The more you look on at games the less you play them, and the more you play them the less are you content to look on. The scene of our modern Olympic Games goes from capital to capital in Europe, and thanks to public spirit and the subscriptions of industrial magnates, great stadiums such as that which we have now at Athens, have come into being. ”

“ There is a bit of poetry about them, too, even if they are short and stubby, ofttimes poking their cushioned noses impertinently up against larger and far more stately craft. But no captain, even though he walk the bridge of an eight-hundred foot steamship, sneers at a tug. It takes eighteen of them to place the new giant Olympic in her wharf on the North River, and no crack company of horsemen ever moved in more precise drill or better coöperation than these noisy, punting, helping-hands of the harbor of New York. For ocean ports are different from those along the lakes. ”

“ But sometimes, when Rosamund was alone in the room of the Hermes, learning her lesson, and he was among the ruins, or walking above the buried Stadium where the flocks were at pasture, he recalled the great contests of the Athletes of ancient Greece; the foot-races which were the original competitions at the games, the races in armor, the long jumps, the wrestling matches, the discus and dart-throwing, the boxing and the brutal pankration. And he remembered that at the Olympic Games there were races for boys, for quite young boys. A boy had won at Olympia who was only twelve years old. ”

“ The accident to the Olympic, when she collided with the cruiser Hawke, convinced me that these ships, the Olympic and Titanic, were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of accident, particularly a collision. ”

“ The 1987 VII International Summer Special Olympic Games, to be held from July 31 to August 8 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, will host 6,000 athletes, 15,000 volunteers, and thousands of guests from around the United States and the world. Every American can be grateful for the many dedicated and selfless organizers of these games, the largest worldwide amateur sporting event of the year.
We can also be grateful indeed for the entire program of Special Olympics. ”

“ I think most of us wish the world would work more like the Olympics. There were all kinds of people bound together by mutual respect and acceptance of the rules of the game. All the individuals and teams had a chance, gave it their best, and win or lose, were better off for their efforts.
As heroic as the feats of the athletes in this Olympics was the way all those involved in the Atlanta Games pressed on in the face of adversity. Just two weeks ago today a pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park. ”

“ The experience of recent years has taught us that international competitions do not always make for amity, and do not always promote amateur sport. The events of the last Olympic games, and the subsequent performances of some of the victors of these games, particularly of the fêted heroes of the so-called Marathon race, have gone far to justify the forebodings of those who feared that one of the chief results of such a competition would be an increase in professionalism. ”

“ Well fed and not overworked, these private human trotters are often marvels of speed and endurance. I would like nothing better than to enter our wrinkled old la-che-ti in an Olympic marathon—though foreigners who have tried that sort of test find that the men cannot run without their vehicle, which is so balanced as to help lift them off the ground. Like the runners, the rickshaws of Peking range all the way from filthy half-wrecks to rickshaw-limousines. ”

“ And Atlanta's magnificent effort at hosting the Olympics is about what's right with America. There are some other things that I believe reflect what's right with America at the Olympics. For example, this year 197 nations have teams, and these teams include places that the United States has helped to move toward peace and freedom. And even in places where the work of peace and freedom is not yet finished, at least there's been enough progress for an Olympic team to emerge. ”

“ In many cities the victor of an Olympic contest was entitled to maintenance at the public charge in the utmost honor, and the greatest poets of the day delighted to celebrate the victors in their stateliest odes. Thus, although games in honor of the gods were held at various other points in Greece, as for example at Delphi and at the isthmus of Corinth, none surpassed the Olympic as a national institution, sharing the highest honors with the oracle at Delphi as an object of universal reverence. ”

“ As we steamed down the river, the scene we had just witnessed was the topic of every conversation: the comparison with the Olympic-Hawke collision was drawn in every little group of passengers, and it seemed to be generally agreed that this would confirm the suction theory which was so successfully advanced by the cruiser Hawke in the law courts, but which many people scoffed at when the British Admiralty first suggested it as the explanation of the cruiser ramming the Olympic. ”

“ We propose to give a brief account of the Olympic games only, as being by far the most splendid, and in which victory was reputed to be the most honourable. The celebrity of these games was extended for many centuries after the extinction of Greek freedom, and their final abolition did not occur until after they had flourished for more than eleven hundred years. ”

“ An art of training sprung up, and in the time of Pindar the professors of the new art, besides reaping a rich harvest from their pupils, received honour scarcely inferior to that of the victors themselves. The rapid development of the Olympic festival had shown the value of athletics as a bond of union between Greeks throughout the world, and the general yearning after a unity which was destined never to be realized found expression in the establishment of other festivals for which Olympia served as a model. ”

“ Athletes from more than 200 nations gathered at the opening ceremony to watch the lighting of the Olympic torch, and to begin two weeks of world-class competition.
America is proud of our Olympians. The talented men and women of Team USA represent almost every state and every background, and range from 15 to 52 years of age. ”

“ The celebrity of the Olympic games, which drew spectators from Asia as well as all the States of Greece, led to similar institutions or festivals in other places. The Pythian games, in honor of Apollo, were celebrated near Delphi every third Olympic year; and various musical contests, exercises in poetry, exhibitions of works of art were added to gymnastic exercises and chariot and horse races. The sacrifices, processions, and other solemnities, resemble those at Olympia in honor of Zeus. ”

“ While I'm unable to be there in person, I want to take this opportunity to speak with you because I deeply believe in the Olympic mission, and have long supported hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in my home city of Chicago. Over the past two years, I've spoken often about my belief that, while we may come from different places and backgrounds, there are certain shared values that unite us. Values at the heart of the Olympic movement: friendship, excellence, and mutual respect. ”

“ The modern Olympic games, such as are held in Athens every now and then, are but feeble attempts to give a classic tone to a very ordinary athletic meet of international character. There is none of the significance attached to the modern events that attended the old, and the management leaves much to be desired. ”

“ Games of various kinds, played either singly or in company, and usually requiring some sort of implement, a ball, a stick, or a hoop. The{14} elements of competition and united effort are usually present, but a prize is not essential.
The history of organized athletics in Greece is a very long one, and extends for some twelve hundred years. The Olympic register of winners in the foot-race begins 776 b.c., this year being taken as the first Olympiad when, in the third century b.c., the Olympic register came into use as the recognized method of reckoning dates. ”

“ According to witnesses of the sinking of the great British dreadnaught Audacious, off the coast of Ireland, there was only one fatality. Naval men in New York unite in praise of the work of the crew of the steamship Olympic, in effecting the rescue of nearly nine hundred men of the sea fighter’s crew. All those not taken off by the Olympic were rescued by the British cruiser Liverpool. ”

“ The wrestlers at the Olympic Games, in the Circus, in Nineveh and in Egypt, stood facing each other from the first, and while they resorted to various tactics of pulling, pushing, twisting the body, interlocking the limbs, and even hitting, their ultimate aim was to obtain the mastery over one another's legs and thus secure a fall. But in the Japanese science of wrestling, as practised since the eighth century, the fall is always a subordinate incident, the principal object being to force the adversary out of a circular ring fifteen feet in diameter. ”

“ The Vice President was right, and I've always thought you could see the spirit of which he spoke in all our Olympic athletes. You can see it in the way so many of them will pause in their daily training in Seoul, as our athletes have at past Olympics, to help competitors from countries where good coaching is hard, if not impossible, to find. ”

“ The Stadion also came to vary; it was nearly always of 100 fathoms, but these might be fathoms of systems varying from the Olympic. The slightly different term Schoinion, meaning a rope or chain, was applied to a measure of 10 fathoms.
The Roman Mile The Romans took for their itinerary unit a length of 8 Olympic stadia and, dividing it into 1000 paces or double steps, called it a mille (mille passus) or mile. The Roman mile and pace are therefore 18respectively four-fifths of the meridian mile and the Olympic fathom—
8/10 of 6080 ft. ”

“ Of the history of the Isthmia in the fifth and fourth centuries we know practically nothing. The records of victories in the games are too scanty to enable us to form any trustworthy conclusions; [343] as far as they go they indicate that the athletic competition was far more local than at Olympia. There are hardly any names of victors recorded from Sicily and Italy which figure so largely in the Olympic records. With the exception of a few periodonikai the competitors come chiefly from Corinth, Aegina, Thebes, and Athens, and some of the islands of the Aegean. ”

“ To these cities flocked the young and the aged, the private citizen and the statesman, the trader and the artist, to witness or engage in the spectacles. The games were open to all citizens who could prove their Hellenic origin; and prizes were awarded for the best exhibitions of skill in poetry—and in running, wrestling, boxing, leaping, pitching the discus, or quoit, throwing the javelin, and chariot-racing.
The most important of these games was the Olympic, though it involved many principles common to the others. ”

“ The Olympic Committee had done things in lavish style, and the funds contributed by lovers of sport all over the country had given them abundance of means. They had learned from previous experience the disadvantages of having the athletes go over on the regular liners. ”

“ Hence the competitors, especially at the Olympia, represented the picked athletes of all the states. The prizes offered at the various festivals enabled many to compete, who in a previous age could not have afforded the necessary time or money; and we may be sure that the emulation of the various states would not have allowed any citizen to lose his chance of the crown for lack of funds. The popular character of athletics is illustrated by a fragment of an epigram ascribed to Simonides on an Olympic victor “who once carried fish from Argos to Tegea.” ”