The Art of Sportsmanship

One of the things I love about the Olympics is that through watching the Games, we occasionally get to see little glimpses of good sportsmanship that are unlike anything seen in mainstream sports.  Good sportsmanship, to me, comes from having a genuine love of one's sport and can only really be experienced when one has the right perspective; it's about being grateful for having the chance to compete, no matter what the outcome.  

I think perhaps everybody's favorite competitor based on sportsmanship this summer was South African Oscar Pistorius, who advanced to compete in the 400-meter finals despite having two prosthetic legs.  

Another example of an athlete who was a good sport in the face of competition was Sam Mikulak, the U.S. gymnast who was in third place in the men's vaulting event as he openly cheered on the competitors who performed after him and ultimately bumped him out of medal position.

But my favorite moment of sportsmanship was in the mens' 10,000 meter run during track and field; skip ahead to 2:40 on this video clip and you'll see Mo Farah, the British distance runner, cross the finish line first to take the gold, followed by his training buddy and my pick for Best Sport of the 2012 Games, Galen Rupp of the U.S.:

In my years of competitive running while I was growing up, my dad always encouraged me before every race to gut it out and to give it my all, to do the homework (and by that he meant to put in the miles and the training beforehand AND to learn whatever I could about both my competition and the course ahead of time), but to leave it all on the track.  He taught me that when the race was over, my competitors were my friends, that our mutual love of running made us allies in a sense.  Through advice that my dad gave me about running, I learned that how one behaves before, during, and after the event is every bit if not more important that who stands on the awards podium at the finish and that sometimes it's your day to have a good race and sometimes it's someone else's day.  That's how I came to value Sportmanship and all it embodies - respect, fairness, kindness, and honesty.  

The Spirit – Not the Spirit of Competition

I’ve been thinking a lot about competitiveness and its place in my life lately.

Dad was very competitive, unless it was at the expense of someone else.  He always set goals for himself for running, whether it was to be among the top finishers, to run the race in a certain time, or to complete a race that was unlike one he had done before, like an ultra-marathon. 

Even with an objective in mind, though, Dad always tried to help other people who were also competing.  He often cheered people on in the middle of a race while he was running.  He always appreciated the spirit of competition and admired people who overcame adversity and challenges to rise to the top, especially when their success wasn’t expected.  On more than one occasion, Dad won a trophy or a medal in a race and then gave it to someone else who had competed in the race but who hadn’t won, often a child who had finished a race for the first time ever.

When I was a teenager, Dad drove a couple of guys from my high school and me to a state park in Mississippi to compete in a small-town road race.  We left early on a Saturday morning, and, as we drove the last mile or so to the starting line, we saw a teenaged boy walking along the side of the road in basketball shorts, walking barefooted and carrying spiked track shoes.  The guys in the car and I laughed when we passed the boy because he seemed so poorly prepared for a race that was about to be run on a paved road.  Dad didn’t laugh; he said, “You never know who’ll get the last laugh.”  We found out how true that was after the race when we found out that the boy had finished in second place overall, running on Dad’s heels with his spikes clicking on the pavement for the entire 5-mile race.  

The last race that he and I participated in together was in May of 2010 and was a Muddy Buddy event in which teams of two had to tag-team over a 7 mile course, taking turns on foot and on a mountain bike.  Teams were put into age divisions according to the combined ages of the two teammates; Dad and I were in the “Over 105 Years Old” age division!  Many teams had dressed in costumes, some of which were quite elaborate.  When everyone lined up at the starting line, I told Dad that we if we ever did another race like this, we should plan to wear something better than the matching t-shirts we had on.  He said, “I think it’d be better just to train more than to hassle with getting costumes.  Today I mostly just don’t want to get beaten by someone who is running in a tutu.”

In this race, Dad started out first on the bike.  At the one-mile mark, he parked the bike and set out on foot.  I started among the other first-leg runners, several minutes behind the first-leg bikers, and ran to the one-mile point and then hopped on the bike.  We continued to leap-frog like that over the rest of the course.  At one point, I was running and heard footsteps coming up behind me.  I turned around and saw Dad running (he was supposed to be biking that leg since I was running it), carrying our bike and another bike too.  

“What happened?” I asked him.  He said that a girl on the course had had a flat tire, and so he offered to carry her bike to the next check-point so that someone there could get started on fixing the tire while she completed that part of the race.  He added, “Don’t worry though, I’ll make sure we still don’t get beaten by anyone wearing a tutu!”

I know in my head that grief and loss are not a competition, but I sometimes cannot help myself from thinking about his death as being more tragic, unfair, shocking, etc. etc. than some other people who were his age or older, who were in poor health because they didn’t take care of themselves, or other illogical ranking factors.  It doesn’t make sense to compare, I know.  It’s hard for me to listen to others’ stories of grief or loss without adding my personal experience or thoughts or advice, but I know I have no idea what I am talking about.  Everyone thinks his or her story is the hardest and most unique.  I guess it isn’t a competition when your heart is broken.  It’s not more or less broken; it’s just broken.  In other words, no heart wears a tutu.