“I’m obviously gutted”. And who wouldn’t be if they were just 0.08 seconds away from the gold medal in a world championship race? Commiserations to Keely Hodgkinson, the 20-year-old Brit pipped to the post in last night’s 800 metres in Oregon.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of an essential truth about sport, despite her disappointment: winning isn’t everything. That tired old cliché is usually trotted out every time some blowhard wants to complain about sporting “failure”. But that is to get the nature of the beast back to front.
Sports — all of them — depend on competition, not victory. Athletes and teams take part in the hope of winning, but with the knowledge they are unlikely to be victorious. So why bother? Hope, of course, love for the game, and delight in the struggle.
Take one of the world’s most gruelling competitions. The Tour de France finished yesterday after three weeks of punishing racing. The defending champion, the Slovenian prodigy Tadej PogaÄar, lost his title in brutal fashion to Jonas Vingegaard, a Danish fishmonger-turned-pro-cyclist.
When it was over, PogaÄar declared: “Not winning doesn’t make much difference for me. Of course it means I have even more motivation for next year, but I just enjoy the spirit of this sport as much as I have always done.”
PogaÄar was until now the man who seemed invincible in cycling. Yet he came down to earth with a bump and took it in his stride.
He has what we might call the amateur spirit — a love of the game. In an era of relentless professionalisation amateurism can seem very old-fashioned. This is partly because some of its most famous practitioners had distinctly baroque ideas. Corinthians FC, the Victorian amateur football club, would make their goalkeeper stand aside if they conceded a penalty, or if they won one they would intentionally miss it. Their reasoning: a gentleman would never commit a foul, so they could not take advantage.
But they understood a fundamental truth about sport, one which underpins the entire, multi-billion pound industry today. It’s a truth we should remember as we froth about victors and vanquished. Winning is one thing, but competing is everything.
