Generous in victory and in defeat

Sport is the perfect way to foster team spirit and learn how to be fair to your opponents and true to yourself. The Olympic Museum, mobilesport.ch and the Cool & Clean programme are offering teachers a range of activity ideas to familiarise their pupils with the notion of fair play and the Olympic values.

As part of the «We are Olympians, and You?» programme, running from 13 April 2019 to 15 March 2020 at The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, teachers can invite their pupils to explore the themes of respect, friendship, fair play and team spirit.

To introduce these topics or build on the experience in class, The Olympic Museum has put together a worksheet on fair play and the Olympic values that includes information and turnkey activities.

In order to actively promote fair play and tolerance in sport, mobilesport.ch and cool & clean have joined forces to develop a range of physical activities for pupils to do in PE class or in the playground.

A common underlying part of sport, fair play covers respect for your opponent, the rules, the referee’s decisions, the public and the spirit of the game, as well as honesty and self-control.

High five?

The five exercises presented below teach children about the importance of fair, respectful conduct in group activities, through examples of how not to behave. In each instance, one of the teams is secretly given an unfair advantage.

At the end of the lesson or session, everyone gets together to discuss their experiences as a group. The participants will have to answer a number of questions: Did everyone play fair? How did the team that was unknowingly competing in unfair conditions react? And what about the winners?