Prime Minister issues message on Olympic Games

[Ellinas]

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis issued a message on Thursday, in view of the Beijing Olympic Games' opening ceremony on Friday, expressing Greece's wishes to athletes and members of the Olympic family from all over the world "in the hope that the Olympic Games will continue inspiring the peoples of the planet with their sublime values."

Referring to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the prime minister noted: "Four years ago, in the summer of 2004, the Olympic Games returned to their cradle. Greece had then undertaken a double task: to organise in safety and successfully the planet's greatest athletic event, but to also highlight in a strong manner the principles and values on which the Olympic spirit was forged."

"With sacrifices and hard work, by uniting our forces to achieve the great target, we Greeks have succeeded beyond the most optimistic expectations. In our nation's history, 2004 will remain for ever as a landmark-date, the beginning of a new era of confidence to the forces and capabilities of Hellenism," Karamanlis underlined.

"Today, the torch passes to China, the most populated country of the planet. A country which, just like Greece, bares the responsibility of continuously responding to its great and ancient civilisation," Karamanlis said, adding that the challenge remained the same as in 2004, as in 1896 and in 776 BC, when the first Olympic Games in history took place at ancient Ilida, in the Peloponnese, that is "to prove on the one hand that surpassing the limits, which many times we arbitrarily set for ourselves, is an inseparable part of the nature of mankind, and on the other hand to prove that, replacing emnity and violent rivalry by fair play, competition and cooperation between men and peoples is not only a desirable and pressingly necessary target but a feasible one."

"With these thoughts and in the hope that the Olympic Games will continue inspiring the peoples of the planet with their sublime values, we Greeks, as the historic guardians of the Olympic spirit, send our best wishes to the athletes and the members of the Olympic family from all over the world, to all those who serve the ideals of sport away from all that adulterates healthy competion," Karamanlis concluded.

ANA