By Faustino Vicente * (Portuguese)
Translation: CaboVerdeOnline.com
China gains priceless media publicity and recognition around the world, not for being the most populated country on planet earth or for its spectacular economic development of the last few years, but rather for being the 2008 headquarters of the 29th edition of Olympic Summer Games.
The Olympic Games were born in the cradle of the philosophy and democracy of the west - Greece - in the year 776 B.C. in the city of Olympia. It was interrupted in 393 D.C. by the decree of Roman emperor Teodósio, and reactivated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1896, in Athens, transforming itself into the biggest spectacle of the blue planet.
Beyond specialized and competitive sports performances, it will have a parade of values and colors, customs, ethnicity and social classes, rhythms and languages, religions, professions and traditions. Marketing, strategies and tactics will be organizational flags. Olympic Games represent the most beautiful cultural manifestation of the human species. The scientific advances of sports medicine discoveries and the technological innovations will produce special effects in launching one more appeal for Peace among mankind.
As example, we cite the evolution of the medias throughout the Olympic Games of the modern age: Athens (1896), telegraph; Paris (1924), radio; Berlin (1936), cinema; Helsinki (1952), electronics; Rome (1960), television and telex; Tokyo (1964), chronometers and photoelectric cells; Munich (1972), satellite TV transmission and in colors; Seoul (1988), fax; Atlanta (1996), cellular telephone and in Sydney (2000), Internet. 
No manifestation, social, economic, cultural, religious or political has been able to globalize all the segments of the international society as has this singular event. Between a dozen sets of sampling, we find in the mix, the biggest expression of team spirit that forces one to reflect on the necessity to abandon the solitary management and to live deeply the solidarity management. If we agree that “the movements carried by the players are called tactics”, we will conclude that the sampling enforces this principle of management with bigger intensity.
The majority of the scores result from the logistics of the following three touches: athleticism - the “DNA” of the olympics - where the participating athlete with his adversaries on his side, starts the race of rotation (4x100) with a baton. Of this model we learn the lesson that the biggest losses inhabited by companies are in the “ticket of baton” between some departments, mainly, for lack of communications - “the Aquilles tendon” - of management. One of the most fascinating competitions is the 100 meter race, which exposes to the world the son of the wind - the quickest man on earth. He trains for four years, to win a contest in less than ten seconds. This is evidence that continued perfectionism adds value. We disclose herein a response from an athlete to a reporter when asked who will be his biggest adversary in Pequim. Without hesitation, he said: “I, myself. I only have me to surpass. I am my only adversary”. 
Thus, each one of us must face life at one point or another. Our only limitation is found in our minds. To obtain the overcoming will some may believe that the key word is determination, other positive thoughts, and for many, faith is the secret.
All the athletes that will be in China are technically exemplary, but only the exceptional ones will make it to record books, with golden letters and their names in history. In the “olympic games of life” a successfull career can be in a small difference, for example, “in the beauty of being a perpetual apprentice”.
As homage to Greece of all the times we lived up with the “immortal phrase” of its celebrated philosopher Aristotle (384-322) A.C: - “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Read: Portuguese Version
