MUHAMMAD ALI HONORED
Muhammad Ali received great praise at the Sports for Peace Gala, where he was honored for his lifelong fight for civil rights, humanity, and peace: “You are a great fighter for justice and humanity, you are the greatest world champion boxer ever, and you have been an inspiration for five decades,” was the collective message given by Wladimir Klitschko, Boris Becker, Sir Christopher Lee, Sir Bob Geldof and the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, in their laudation for the “Greatest of All Time” on the 25th of July at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The former Formula 1 World-Champion Lewis Hamilton presented the “Sports for Peace Honorary Award 2012” to the first ever 3-time world heavyweight champion and winner of the Gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
London
On the historic occasion of the XXX. Olympic Games 2012 in London the initiative “Sports for Peace“ hosted a Gala on July 25 at the Victoria&Albert museum in order to highlight humanity through sports and honour Muhammad Ali, the greatest icon of our time. This evening celebrated Ali`s Six Core values as they relate to the Olympic ideals, while raising awareness for the Muhammad Ali Center and Parkinson research.
The aim of this evening is to celebrate the Olympic values and Muhammad Ali’s six core values: respect, confidence, conviction, dedication, giving and spirituality.
The Gala took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The evening started with a reception in one of London’s most beautiful gardens and was followed by a black-tie Gala dinner & ceremony in the prestigious Raphael Gallery which houses some of the most important surviving examples of Renaissance art in the world including seven Raphael cartoons dating back to 1516.
Sports for Peace
The initiative “Sports for Peace” was invented during the preliminary stages of the Olympic Games 2008 in response to the question whether sport or major sporting events could be obliged to common ideals. In “Sports for Peace” athletes from all over the world gain an important platform on which they can join their responsibility to promote the essential intrinsic values of sport: fair play, tolerance, the Olympic ideal of freedom, international and intercultural understanding. As a politically independent initiative “Sports for Peace” offers a neutral basis to foster the spirit of fair play, the sense of community and the elimination of prejudice. In 2010 Nelson Mandela joined forces with „Sports for Peace“ as an Honorary Patron with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and President Zuma at the FIFA World Cup in South-Africa in order to promote education for children.
The Olympic Values
The basic notions of the Olympic values are generosity, tolerance, equality, understanding and international co-operation, unification, cultural exchanges, the development of sport and its educational aspects, fair play and the promotion of a global society concerned with human dignity and peace. The Olympic Games have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles.
The Muhammad Ali Center
The Muhammad Ali Center serves both as a cultural attraction and international education center that is inspired by the ideals of its founder Muhammad Ali. They are committed to developing educational resources that assure a fully integrated, multicultural, and multidisciplinary process for educating a wide range of audiences – both in person, online, and through other distance learning methods. By utilizing their programming and fostering partnerships with other ORGANIZATIONS whose institutional mission closely align with their own, the Ali Center strives to provide educational venues that have relevance and resonate in the hearts and minds of people around the world. The Ali Center preserves and translates Ali’s CORE values (respect, confidence, conviction, dedication, giving and spirituality) into universal life lessons, motivational programming, and global initiatives to inspire people all over the world to achieve their own “greatness.”
The Michael J. Fox Foundation
The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to delivering patients better Parkinson’s disease treatments and, ultimately, finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease through an aggressively funded research agenda and to ensuring the development of improved therapies for those living with Parkinson today.We believe without fail that our goal is within reach - but we can’t get there without your support.