Reception Hosted by the Vancouver Organizing Committee
for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

Athens, Greece, Thursday, October 29, 2009

It is a privilege to be here in Athens, to continue this ancient tradition of passing the Olympic flame.

We will soon be heading to Olympia, where there remain to this day vestiges of the sport facilities once used for the Olympic Games of Antiquity.

We will be visiting the very places where Pierre de Coubertin first expressed his wish to “realise [sic], upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games.”

A monumental task with a view to “blending sport with culture and education” and “encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity,” as he envisioned it.

A monumental, civilizing task, one that humanity needs now more than ever before in these uncertain times marked by outbursts of hostilities.

In a just few months, it will be our turn to carry aloft the sacred fire of Olympism, as the moving ceremony in which we have just participated reminded us.

This great dream of welcoming the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to Vancouver has never been as real as it is at this very moment. We are almost there, on the eve of a great celebration of fellowship.

And I am certain that we will make this gathering not only an opportunity to showcase athletic excellence, but also a celebration of the solidarity between peoples, as de Coubertin imagined.

Soon, all eyes will be upon us.

It is up to us to achieve our very best, as only we know how to do in our country of infinite horizons and unlimited possibilities.