Author: Calvin Setar

Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African President, once spoke in no uncertain terms of his love for sport, of his admiration for its transformative nature, of its ability to join even the most diametrically opposed cultural forces, if only for a short time.

“Sport has the power to change the world,” Mandela said once, his voice ringing out to a stadium of 65,000, moments from tearing one another apart. “It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.”

And while Mandela – the man whose contributions to not only his home country, but the world at large, were so vast, so far-reaching that we spent last Monday, as we will every July 18, celebrating his legacy – was speaking of the black-white racism threatening to rip asunder the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and in turn, Johannesburg, his words apply more broadly even, may be required now more than ever for an America – and a world – that finds itself asking why, oh god why, again and again and again.

For Charley Cullen Walters, an Olympic analyst and LGBT advocate preparing to wing his way to Rio for the 2016 Summer games, Mandela’s words represent a similar lesson of acceptance, of self and culture-wide growth, that he too preaches, that Walters hopes is refreshed in the minds of Olympic-loving fans, of the world, not just every two years, but every day, every morning when they brush their teeth, send their children to school, every evening at the close of day, when they shutter their home, those same children soundly asleep in the nearest room.

Continue @TheOutsideGame