“The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.”
― Brian Tracy

I’m watching Olympic volleyball as I create this. US versus Poland. While my heart is with the red, white, and blue, the match is hotly contested, and the outcome is in serious doubt. It is a shame one team must win and one team must lose but that is the way we measure success. Winners or losers, there is nothing in between.

When the match is over one team with be running amok with chest bumps, high fives, and hugs. The other team will react with tears, some on their knees attempting to bury their heads in the hardwood floor. Ah, the agony of defeat.

This year, nearly one thousand medals will be awarded in three hundred and twenty-nine medal events across forty-five sports.  I will check the medal count daily and live vicariously through our athletes as they strive for the podium.

Two hundred and three different Olympic committees with over eleven thousand athletes are competing for one thousand pieces of gold, silver, and bronze. Three hundred and twenty-nine gold medals will be awarded, the rest are “losers.” Granted, medals will be earned for the first and second losers.

The lyrics of the Steely Dan tune, “Deacon Blues”, plays in my head.

“They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blues.”

The song is about the unrealized desire of a man who wants to be a jazz saxophonist but somehow it resonates in my meandering mind. It may be because of my unrealized desire to be both a professional saxophonist and a professional baseball player. I understand losing.

Loser update: Poland prevailed and the US volleyball team will have to be satisfied playing for the second loser spot. For those lost in my analogy, that is the bronze medal.

I’m sure many of you would like for me to “get to the point.”

For forty-one years I was an athletic coach. I, and my teams were defined by two distinct but opposite poles. Winning or losing. There was no middle ground. There was no room for moral victories. All I had to do was look at the scoreboard to see if my team was successful. Too many moral victories will get a coach fired.

It wasn’t until I took over a team that hadn’t won a game in two years and had in thirty-seven years never won more games than they lost that I had to redefine what was successful. Effort, making the effort to win. We were the greatest example of “the participation trophy” but we took that first step and improved.

The modern Olympic creed, expressed by its founder Pierre de Coubertin says it all. “The most important thing. . . is not winning but taking part”. The Olympics are about diverse groups coming together and taking part.

The nearly eleven thousand athletes competing in the Olympics are all winners. Most will not collect a medal. Some will lose by an eyelash while others will finish dead last. Some will get the dreaded DQ and a pole vaulter lost a chance at the podium because his man part got in the way although his dating portfolio may have improved.

While draped in a shroud of controversy from the “get go” I have found much to celebrate in this year’s Olympics. Simone Biles returning to gymnastics and silencing a long line of nay sayers, along with the rest of the gymnastic team that shouldn’t be forgotten because of Simone. Katie Ledecky and our swimming teams were dominant. Our track and field teams were too.

My favorite feel-good stories:  A sixty-one-year-old Chinese ping pong player gave me a short-lived moment of hope. The Turkish shooter dressed in jeans, tee-shirt, and black horn rims finishing on the podium in his event. All he needed was a shirt pocket with a pack of Camel unfiltered to be perfect.

The pommel horse gymnist with his own pair of horn rims. A bicyclist who four months ago was an alternate, winning the gold in her event. An Egyptian seven-month pregnant fencer redefined what it meant tocompete in the Olympics.

Not all of my heros were participants. The “dad bodied” guy in the colorful Speedo who was responsible for collecting swimming caps from the bottom of the pool was the definition of bravery.

We throw the descriptor “loser” around too much, especially here in the United States. We forget that all these athletes train for months if not years just to participate. They invest massive amounts of time, many on their own dime and most fall short.

All athletes are not as blessed as Simone Biles; some are the Eddie the Eagle, the Jamaican bobsled team, Eric the Eel or the poster boy for the “agony of defeat” on the Wide World of Sports, Vinko Bogataj. They all lost or wiped out in glorious fashion. All had to win something just to get to the world stage. I toast all the losers in the Olympics, you are all champions.

***

Don Miller writes to stay sane. Some would say he has failed as gloriously as Vinko Bogataj. Don’s latest non-fiction offering is “Food For Thought, More Musings From a Mad Southerner.” His latest fictional release is “Thunder Along the Copperhead.” Both and more can be found at https://author.amazon.com/home?authorId=amzn1.amazonauthor.author.v1.va7gjnpr6ccslobr6eec3vbdag