Most of the British newspapers carried two stories side by side on Tuesday.
The first story carried the smiling pictures of Camilla Parker, Kate Middleton Prince William, Prince Harry -the members of royal family- who were all watching their relative Zara Phillip competing in the individual equestrian cross country event.
The other story had photos of British diver Tom Daley cursing his luck for missing a medal which he promised to win for his late father who died of cancer last year after a long battle.
If Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the father of modern Olympics, was still alive he would have been the happiest person in the world seeing these two stories together as in all his life it was the kind of Olympics he dreamt of.
The picture of a princess and a pauper together reflected the true spirits of Olympics where people from all caste, colour, race, gender or religion from all over the world are entitled to participate.
The selection of Zara, the grand-daughter of Queen Elizabeth, gave the Olympics a perfect look, true to its spirit, though it was always expected from someone who is only the third rider in history to hold both the world and European titles.
Along with her royal heritage she also has a family history of sports as her mother Princess Anne and father Mark Phillip rode in the Olympic Games for Great Britain.
Anne competed in Montreal in 1976 and Mark was a team gold medallist at Munich in 1972 and won silver in Seoul in 1988. Even her husband Mike Tindall also has a sporting background as he was a member of the English rugby union side that won the 2003 World Cup.
If her royal connection made 31-year old Zara the toast of international media, British are playing no little attention to Daley, Rebecca Adlington and Mohammad Farah, who all have a very humble background.
Diver Daley took his basic education from a community school where he was bullied by other kids until the age of 15. He earned many sympathisers after his father succumbed to cancer only at the age of 40. Rebecca, arguably best swimmer in England in 100 years, who took the country to her feet winning a gold in Beijing, also came from a family that needed community support.
Rebecca began her career at a community pool which was later named after her. She was unable to retain her gold in London and settled only with a bronze, which too has become a rare medal for the host country.
Britain’s one of the best medal hopes lies in Mohammad Farah, the Somalia-origin long distance runner, who came here at the age of eight as a war refugee.
He was born and raised in Mogadishu before his comfortable family upbringing was disrupted as the country sank into civil war. His family first moved to neighbouring Djibouti before heading to England, where his father was born.
When Farah came to England he did not know a single English word, but over the time he turned into great hope for the British just like Zara Phillips, the eventual silver medalist, whose family rules the country for centuries.
-With New Age input
