When you have witnessed the full promise of an Olympic Games beginning to end—and have seen the possibilities of the finest young athletes from every nation living and competing together in friendship and peace—it is nearly impossible to hold back the emotional power of hope.  It is the kind of experience that evokes the question, “Why can’t it always be like this?” You can sense that sentiment in the final words of Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s recollection of the wonderful experience he had at the Stockholm 1912 Olympic Games.  And you can feel it at the Closing Ceremony of every modern Olympics, as the Five-Ring Flag is passed to the next host city.  At Rio in 2016, Governor Yuriko Koike received the flag for the Tokyo 2020 Games.  Today’s quote comes from “The Fifth Olympiad (Stockholm 1912),” which is chapter thirteen in the Baron’s Olympic Memoirs. 

“The curtain fell on this Grand Finale.  Then came the departures.  The time had come to leave and, while the fleeting northern summer was drawing to a close and the rays of the sun became more oblique, the last visitor went off full of gratitude towards his Scandinavian friends and full of hope for the future of Olympism.”