A Greek, a Chinaman and an Austrian walk into a restaurant…

I’m not sure if a simple table of Italian dishes and good company can serve as a platform for the contemplation of eternal truths, but it isn’t a bad place to start. Especially when the house is pouring a very fine Barbera.

This weekend we are hosting guests who have traveled to Torino for the chance to carry the one Olympic flame for a few hundred meters and a lifetime memory.

The hosts included three Americans and an Austrian. The guests were journalists who were given the torch opportunity by Coca-Cola as a PR gesture. The hope is that the goodwill this generates will turn into positive coverage. Of the three invited journalists only two were with us at dinner.

One was Ioannis from the national Greek newspaper “To Vima”. A younger guy who throught the tour we took them on during the day was constently going off on his own to find something else. (As if seeing the Olympic Torch Relay in a small Italain village in the Alps wasn’t enough?)
The other was Yang Ming, a very famous sports writer from China. A tall lanky man with a ready smile and broken English. Mr. Yang has covered every Summer Olympic Games since 1988. While in Atlanta for the 96 Games he was credited with the first news wire report of the Centennial Park bombing. A feat he attributed partly to luck and primarily to his running talent from training as a champion pole-vaulter (five meters – still a Chinese Army record).

Our third journalist invitee, Billy Bush, did not join us as he had a late flight from Los Angeles. He is the anchor for “Access Hollywood.”

But the scene at dinner this evening was to me a very real example of how this “Olympic Movement” concept really can bring people together and foster a better understanding of each other. It is a stretch to imagine another reason to have this disparate group of people break grissini together.

Ioannis was fascinated with Mr. Yang’s explanation of the Mandarin language and pictogram characters. In turn he was interested in Ioannis’ description of translation services on Google. And so it went. Just people sharing notes on the way of their life.

In ancient Greece there may have been a similar scene at the Olympics with someone from Corinth showing a new sandal design to a Spartan over a handful of olives and retsina. Back then armies would lay down their swords to attend the Games. Perhaps this ideal that is still at the core of the Olympics is alive and well.

We were drawn together by the spectacle of sport and found common ground in the everyday descriptions of our lives. Ideals and aspirations are powerful forces. There is good reason that the Olympics are known for their inspiration and bringing people together. I hope that comes across in the coverage you will see on NBC.

Ciao from Torino