[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 48 (Monday, December 4, 2000)]
[Pages 2941-2942]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for the United States Olympic and Paralympic 
Teams

November 29, 2000

    Thank you very much. First of all, Hillary and I are delighted to 
welcome all of you here. And I want to thank Secretary Shalala and 
General McCaffrey for being part of our Olympic delegation to Sydney. I 
thank the United States Olympic Committee President Bill Hybl for being 
here, and the Olympians who are here with me, who will come up in a 
moment.
    I'm also grateful, I might say, to the people of Australia who did a 
wonderful job in welcoming our American athletes and organizing these 
Olympics. And really, I asked all the team here so that I could forgive 
them for completely destroying my sleep habits for several weeks during 
the Olympics. [Laughter] Like so many Americans, I was thrilled by the 
accomplishments of these remarkable teams.
    I have often said that it seems to me the Olympics capture our 
imagination not just because we love athletics and love competition but 
because we think the Olympics and Paralympics Games work the way life 
ought to work: people work together; if you work hard and play by the 
rules, you get rewarded; you're evaluated regardless of race or gender 
or station in life; individuals and teams find success and wind up 
winning just by making the efforts.
    The Summer Games in Australia were no different than the ones before 
them. America did very well, once again, with 40 gold medals, 97 
overall, more than any other country. And our spirit was put on display 
there, as one athlete after another overcame tremendous odds to achieve 
victory, athletes like our diver, Laura Wilkinson, who captured the gold 
medal just 3 months after breaking three bones in her right foot; Lenny 
Krayzelburg, who came here from the Ukraine in 1989 and just a decade 
later won all three of the backstroke events; the women's softball team 
lost three games in a row and still came from behind to win the gold 
medal; and of course, there was the minor matter of a little farm boy 
from Wyoming, Rulon Gardner, who defeated Alexandre Karelin.
    The Sydney Games broke new barriers, opening gates of competition to 
people once left behind. More than 4,000 athletes, representing a record 
122 countries, competed in this year's Paralympic Games. Americans like 
sprinter Marlon Shirley and cyclist Pam Fernandes proved that disability 
is no barrier to success.
    We also reached a milestone for female athletes. A hundred years ago 
the first women competed at the Paris Summer Olympics. There were 19, 
and one, the golfer Margot Abbot, became the first American woman to win 
an American Olympic gold medal.
    This year, in the first Olympics of the new millennium, women 
comprised a recordbreaking 42 percent of the participants. And for the 
first time, women competed in the pole vault, water polo, and 
weightlifting. I might say I watched the women's weightlifting and water 
polo competition with great interest, and after it was over, I couldn't 
tell which one was rougher. [Laughter] The final American medal of this 
year's Olympic Games went to a woman, Emily deRiel, in the first-ever 
women's pentathlon. You pushed the limits of the human body and the 
human spirit.
    Every Olympian stands in the starting blocks alone, of course, but 
no one wins alone. No one wins without family, friends, coaches, and 
others who have helped you make the most of your God-given ability. I 
hope that you, each and every one of you, in your own way will take some 
time to help others make the most of their God-given abilities.
    And let me just put in one plug for one public interest matter that 
I care a lot about. One of the great ironies of the present day is that 
as Americans fall more and more in love with athletes and athletics, 
more and more of our young people are participating by sitting on the 
sidelines or on the couch only. More and more of our young children

[[Page 2942]]

are overweight and out of shape, and they are putting their health, 
long-term, at risk. We have got to turn this around.
    This morning Secretary Shalala and our Education Secretary, Dick 
Riley, led a meeting with our partners to explore the most effective way 
to implement a report's recommendation that was issued to me today about 
this--and you may have read about it in the newspaper--more and more 
young people doing less and less exercise mean more and more overweight. 
It's going to take a team effort for us to turn this around.
    Not every young person can win an Olympic medal or even make the 
Olympics teams, but every young person has a body that is a gift from 
God that ought to be maximized in terms of health and capacity. So I ask 
for your help in that.
    Let me just say one final thing. For some of you, your Olympic 
moment may be now just a wonderful memory in your lives. For others, it 
is just the beginning of a long and illustrious career in your sport. 
But for all of you, your training and your achievement will bring a 
lifetime of benefits. You now know what you can do if you do your best. 
I hope that these benefits will accrue to you, your community, your 
country, and the rest of our world.
    We must always remember that no matter how many records we break or 
how fast we run or how high we jump, there are still no limits to our 
quest for excellence--the Olympic motto from the beginning, citius, 
altius, fortius, swifter, higher, stronger. I hope you will bring that 
to the work of citizenship as well as to your competition, now and 
forever.
    Congratulations. We are very, very proud of you.

[At this point, U.S. Olympic Committee President Bill Hybl, 
International Olympic Committee Vice President Anita L. DeFrantz, and 
members of the Olympic team presented gifts to the President.]

    The President. Thank you. Let me--I don't think I did this right, 
but the Olympians who gave me the award were Stacy Dragila and Lenny 
Krayzelburg and Marlon Shirley and Pam Fernandes, and they represent 
this whole team. And they also made me a little warmer out here today. 
[Laughter]
    So I want to thank them for their remarks. I thank all of you for 
being here. We either are or already have taken a picture with the whole 
team, and then we're going to go inside and let everybody look at the 
White House. But thank you very, very much, all of you. Welcome again, 
and happy holidays.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:45 p.m. on the South Portico of the 
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Greco-Roman wrestler Rulon 
Gardner and pole vaulter Stacy Dragila, U.S. Olympic Team; and Greco-
Roman wrestler Alexandre Karelin, Russian Olympic Team.