ABSTRACT
The body commands our attention. Crowded newsstands display rows of magazines adorned with static muscular and erotic forms. Television thrusts before eyes and mind images of dynamic powerful bodies engaged in athletic struggles that take on ‘life or death’ proportions. [ 2 ] Perhaps nowhere is the athletic body more inspiring than when framed within the ritual, festival and spectacle of the modern Olympic Games. Anthropologist John MacAloon has aptly said of this compelling quadrennial event: ‘The ‘‘transcendental ground’’ of Olympic ritual is the idea of human-kindness’. The games' creator Pierre de Coubertin struggled long and hard to create and protect this celebration of ‘human being’ and ‘festival of human unity’. [ 3 ]
