[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[April 13, 1994]
[Pages 690-692]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner Honoring the United States Winter Olympic Athletes
April 13, 1994

    Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President and Dr. 
Walker and--what am I supposed to call Hillary in public?--[laughter]--
Madam First Lady.
    You know, one of the things these Olympians learn is a whole lot of 
discipline and, along with that, sort of good conduct and good manners. 
But I think we're about to test it. They've already heard all of us give 
one set of speeches today, and now they're having to sit through a 
second or stand through a second, as the case may be. It was wonderful 
for us to have all of them at the White House today. And I want to thank 
them for coming, for giving all of us who work in the White House a big 
thrill at having the opportunity to meet them and congratulate them and 
express our great pride in their achievements.
    One potentially unfortunate thing occurred at the White House today. 
Several of them invited me to jog in the morning. [Laughter] So there's 
a whole bunch of them coming, and now that I've announced it, doubtless 
more will come as well. And so I'm going to have to go home

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early and get some extra sleep tonight. The Vice President would come, 
too--and he's a better runner than I am--but he's on his way to 
Marrakesh tonight. He's really taking a marathon--going to the meeting 
which will finalize the understanding among all of our nations for a new 
worldwide trade agreement and reminding the other countries that they 
promised that the next time we make a worldwide trade agreement, it will 
be a green round, one devoted to protecting the global environment and 
proving that that, too, can be good for our common economic destiny. So 
I thank him for that.
    A few moments before he ran and won the 100-meter final and captured 
the gold medal in an Olympics a long time ago, one of the heroes of my 
youth, Jesse Owens, said, ``A lifetime of training for just 10 
seconds.'' Dr. Walker and I were talking out here before we came out to 
visit one more time and stand with the Olympians, and we were 
speculating about what the longest Winter Olympic event is, maybe the 
cross-country skiing, maybe the biathlon. But even the longest one is 
just the flash of an eye compared to all the training. Think of how many 
of these young athletes have worked their lifetimes to compete for a 
minute, sometimes slightly less, sometimes slightly more; a long event, 
an exhausting event in some of these encounters is 2 or 3 or 4 minutes. 
But really, it isn't a lifetime of effort for 10 seconds or 2 minutes or 
2 hours. It's a lifetime of effort for a lifetime of reward. The reward 
of knowing that you have done your best with your God-given abilities, 
the reward of knowing you have lived a good life and stand out as a good 
model.
    I asked all these young people today to continue to visit schools 
and see the children of America, as they did today. So many of our 
children today don't have parents or coaches or teachers who can get 
them up early in the morning, encourage them to great heights, provide 
the opportunities that so many of the rest of us take for granted. And 
yet I think these young Olympians, simply by talking to disadvantaged 
kids who may have no hope, who may have no opportunity in their own 
mind, who may not even be able to imagine what it is like to make a 
commitment for a year, much less 5 or 10 years or 20 years, the 
incredible impact that they can have on the young people of America is 
something that we must never underestimate and something that I hope and 
pray they will never underestimate.
    I'd also like to say, to echo what the Vice President said, that we 
are doing our best through the President's Council on Sports and 
Physical Fitness to try to spread opportunities for participating in 
athletics to all of our people. And I have to tell you that one of the 
real tragedies of the economic hardships our country endured in the 
1980's is that many of our schools and many of our cities cut back on 
recreational facilities. Here in the Nation's Capital, I am told that 
there are only three functioning ballparks that are open to kids who 
want to start teams. We have kids growing up on streets in America today 
who get all the way through their teen years without ever holding a 
baseball bat in their hand or having a mitt on their hand. We have whole 
cities where there are no Olympic-size swimming pools for children to 
swim in.
    And so the second thing I ask of you all is to try to remind the 
city fathers and the State officials and the Federal officials, too, 
that body and mind go hand in hand, and we've got to bring recreational 
opportunities back to kids. We have to give them the spirit of teamwork 
and possibility even those who can never be Olympic athletes.
    And finally, let me remind you that when the Olympics started, I 
mean, really started a long time ago, it gave all the warring Greek city 
states an excuse to quit fighting with one another and find a way to 
compete in peace and harmony and to forge bonds of understanding among 
people who literally were at war one with the other. We saw that in a 
gripping way in these Winter Olympics when the courageous Olympians from 
Bosnia somehow made their way to Lillehammer.
    And so I ask all of you who have had the experience of the Olympics 
always to be emissary for a decent and humane set of relations among the 
people of the world. Most of what people are fighting for in this old 
world today, with the end of the cold war, is based on ancient hatreds, 
not present rational divisions, not principled arguments over 
differences in a way of life but old-fashioned bigotry that somehow they 
can't quite overcome. The spirit of the Olympics can help that, and all 
of you can embody that for the rest of your lives.
    Somehow I think that all of these words that we've just said may not 
be quite registering on all the athletes because they've been through so 
much this year. Robert Frost once said about

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the present, ``It is too much for the senses, too crowded, too 
confusing, too present to imagine.'' But soon the present will be past, 
and all the athletes will fully comprehend, with the benefit of time, 
the magnitude of their achievement in making our Olympic team and what 
they mean in their own lives and to the lives of their friends and 
families and what they can mean to the lives of so many millions of 
others in America. The Olympic moment may be over, but their lifetime of 
training will bring a lifetime of benefits to themselves and to all the 
rest of us as well.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 8:10 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel. 
In his remarks, he referred to Leroy Walker, president, U.S. Olympic 
Committee.