For generous commentators, the spirit of the Olympics might be captured in the words of the modern games’ founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin:

The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.

These liberal ideals, of course, were never really manifested, not even in the first modern games in 1896 Athens.