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The Olympic Odyssey

In The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the True Spirit of the Great Games, Phil Cousineau explores the mythic underpinning of sports and their power to transform lives. "Why are you not breathing hard and fast, as if in the most exhilarating race, striving to do your best, to reach for the laurel, the life of excellence?" he challenges the reader in the introduction. "Is that not what every Olympiad asks of us—to reflect on the game of life within the Game?"

Cousineau, author of Once and Future Myths and The Hero's Journey, says the Olympic Games are about much more than speed and record-breaking performances: "They show us what it means to engage in the agon, or trial of life, with every fiber of our being." The U.S. Olympic Committee felt this thesis so well described the inner life of sports that they presented a copy of The Olympic Odyssey to every American athlete and coach participating in the 2004 summer games in Athens.

David Wallechinsky's popular Book of the Olympics contains a compilation of statistics and strange events from past Olympiads, and David Young's The Modern Olympics focuses on the social and political reasons for the revival for the Games in 1896. In contrast, Cousineau concentrates on the spiritual and psychological aspects of the competition. In these inspiring essays, he shows how the modern athlete reenacts the hero's journey, moving from the dark wood of despair and self-doubt to the promise of victory and apotheosis.

Dan Jansen skated to the gold in Lillehammer, soon after his sister Jane died from leukemia. Al Oerter threw the discus despite torn cartilage and a searing pain in his ribs in Tokyo, and gymnast Kerri Strug vaulted on a badly injured ankle to claim her medal in Atlanta. Using such examples, Cousineau expands on David L. Miller's premise in Gods and Games that play prepares us to cope with other challenges. He also considers our almost religious identification with the athletes, noting our sudden intake of breath as a skater executes a perfect triple axel and the racing of our hearts as a sprinter kicks across the finish line. As athletes push beyond their ordinary limits, they carry us along with them. We are not merely spectators but enthusiasts (from entheos, to be filled with god) and claim a portion of each victory for ourselves.

Cousineau maintains that the Olympics were intended to take us beyond the ego and connect us to the body of the world. In a key chapter on the mythic origins of the Games, he tells the story of King Iphitus, an ailing leader much like the Wounded Fisher King in Arthurian legend. Iphitus is at war and his kingdom is laid waste because people have forgotten how to compete in the game of life. We must remember that we compete "not for ourselves alone but for the honor of the gods, our families, our homelands,"Cousineau writes. "Mythically and psychologically, the ancient games provided an ideal along the lines of the inspired dreams of Euripides, the poems of Pindar, the speeches of Pericles—a transcendent vision of our better selves. The loss of this uplifting vision," he warns, "leads to disintegration of the land and to despair, as embodied by the sorrowful king."

The third-century Greek poet Articlorus advised, "Learn the rhythm that binds all men," and Cousineau shows how this unifying rhythm can be found in sports. Games have always helped to "get us in sync" with one another, he says, and the Olympics are an enduring passion play, a mass medium of transcendence, that allows us to momentarily put aside our differences and consider such universal themes as the pursuit of excellence, the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, and the importance of belief and hope.

Cousineau closes with an essay on the encroaching commercialism of professional sports. While critics claim that "big money" is eroding the Olympic ideal, Cousineau insists that our most beloved athletes are motivated by the inner quest. The legendary track star Jesse Owens believed "the inner life is the true Olympics," and Nadia Comaneci, the first gymnast to earn a perfect score of 10, viewed her training as a spiritual test: "Pray to be a strong person. Never pray for an easy life."

Reviewed by Valerie Andrews in the Fall 2004 issue of Parabola Magazine. To learn more about the magazine, go to www.parabola.org.

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