Marilyn King is a two-time Olympian who represented the USA in the women’s pentathlon in 1972 and 1976. When she was involved in a serious car accident in 1979 and was unable to train for the 1980 USA Olympic Team, she used visualization and mental rehearsal – the power of the mind – to prepare herself for competition. She placed second in the Olympic trials without physical training. Inspired by her success, she began a new career teaching “Olympian thinking” to diverse audiences including school children and business executives. Another goal continues to be using the prestige of Olympians champions to promote peace in all its forms. She founded the Olympian Peace Team which now makes a major contribution through the United Nations to promote peace throughout the world.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932, Olga Fikotová began competing in discus while she was a student at the Charles University of Medicine in Prague. After just two years of competition, she went on to win the gold medal in discus at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. She met and later married Hal Connolly, who had won the hammer throw for the United States that year. As an American citizen, Fikotová-Connelly represented the U.S. at the next four Olympics. She was selected to carry the U.S. flag at the 1972 Munich Olympics Opening Ceremony and became preoccupied with promoting the Olympics as a forum for world peace. Olga and Hal Connolly were divorced in the mid-70s but one of their sons became a national-caliber javelin thrower and decathlete, and one of their daughters played on the U.S. national volleyball team. Fikotová-Connelly continued to write about the Olympics as a force for peace, with articles published in both the New York and Los Angeles Times. In her autobiography, Rings of Destiny, she writes, “We have matured to realize that it was neither the medals and the pageantry, nor the flags and the elevation of one nation above another, that made the Olympics so universally stirring. We see the splendor of the Olympic movement in its offer of hope, and if men will summon the courage to find one another despite the barriers between them, they will discover they can compete with honor and live in peace.” Fikotová-Connelly died on April 12, 2024, at 91 years old.