Soccer at its Finest!

Ciao,

Today we traveled over to the Univeristy of Lausanne by metro to listen to a lecture on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by Professor Chappelle. During this lecture, we learned a lot about all of the different aspects that go into the Olympics and the history of how the IOC has managed to become what it is today. We also learned about the changes that have occurred throughout the Olympics from year to year that deal with certain topics such as doping, youth participation, and even the religious aspects of sport.

After the lecture we headed to the official Olympic Museum. We had a guided tour that gave us some insight on the history of the Olympics. We were able to touch a gold, silver, and bronze medal as part of the exhibit. This part was very neat for all of us since many of us will probabably never have the opportunity to be a part of the Olympics. We were also able to see some of the more recent Olympic awards that we could relate to and remember watching on TV. An interesting fact that we learned about the Olympic symbol (the 5 interlocking rings), was that each color of the rings is contained in every single country's flag. There is not one flag that does not contain one of the 5 colors in the Olympic symbol!

With the conclusion of the tour, we had another lecture with Maria Bogner who is the head of the IOC Olympic Studies Center. She showed us a very neat video of the Beijing Olympics and also gave us a little more background information on the Olympics and the types of things that students do at the IOC Olympic Studies Center. We were also taken downstairs to the archive room to see some of the original documents from Pierre Coubertin (the person who rejuvenated the Olympics after tge Romans destroyed them). We also saw a thank you letter that was signed by Adolf Hitler. These documents were extremely rare and it was exciting for us to have the opportunity to look at these.

The last thing that we did at the Olympic museum was see the library of resources. There was an entire library dedicated to sports and the only books inside were about sports or related to sports in one way or another. We had to opportunity to look all around and read anything that we were interested in learning more about.

After the Olympic Museum we hopped on a bus toward Geneva. On the way we stopped to watch a professional women's championship soccer game about ten minutes away from Geneva. The two teams playing were Nyon (the local team)and Geneva. The score of the game at half time was 1-0 Geneva. However, in the second half, Nyon was not going to back down. Nyon ended up tying the game in the 70th minute, 1-1. This sent the game into the two 15 minute overtimes that had to be played the whole way through. After the two over times, both teams had scored a goal making it 2-2. This then sent the teams into a penalty kick shoot-out. The shoot-out ended up going to 8 different shooters, which was CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!! It was so exciting watching these women compete and succeed in these pressure situations!!!! Finally, after a long battle the local team, Nyon won!!!! We couldn't have asked for a better soccer game. We also arranged for a group picture with the winning team which will be a nice souvenir to have. We were exhausted after our long day and all crashed once we got to Geneva.

Ciao Tutti,

Lindsey Schwartz
B.S. Kinesiology Major, Pre-Vet Studies