Outside the Olympics, there are massive discrepancies within all sports. But the positive side for me is that the Olympics are the biggest platform there is, and there's total equality across all sports.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect.
Sport allows us to engage in dialogue and to build bridges, and it may even have the capacity to reshape international relations. The Olympic Games embody perfectly this universal mission.
For me, by far, the Olympics is the biggest sporting event in the world.
The Olympic Games are highly commercialised. They purport to follow the traditions of an ancient athletics competition, but today it is the commercial aspect that is most apparent. I have seen how, through sport, cities and corporations compete against each other for financial gain.
Sporting events like the Olympics have developed and maintained a clear message of promoting gender equality as an essential criterion in the success of any international event.
The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.
To compare Olympic sport with cricket would not be fair. Years back, cricket was a sport only for the classes, and we will also have to make other sports masses from classes like cricket.
The Olympics have their own unique atmosphere and energy. People might say it's just the same as any other competition, but don't kid yourself. There's a hunger for victory.
The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us.
No one pretends anymore that the Olympics are just about sports. It's routine to talk about what effect holding the Games in this or that capital will have on the host country's international reputation, how a nation's prestige can be raised by its medal count.