Olympics

Losers

/ cigarman501 / 6 Comments

“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

Olympic Lows….

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

I’ve enjoyed the Winter Olympics…not the actual Olympics but the backstories.  I’m not much into cold weather sports…or just cold weather.  I do enjoy the stories of what the athletes have overcome to get to where they are.  The Nigerian bobsled team, an American soldier who had to train for the bobsled while serving in the sands of a far-off land…you get the idea.  What I haven’t understood is the hatred directed at some of them.

My case in point is Lindsay Vonn.  I admit I haven’t really followed her career, hanging on her every run.  I did make note that she was a pretty, blonde haired girl who liked to go fast and live on the edge.  She reminded me of all the pretty blond girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day…back in the day.  I didn’t hold it against her and watched replays of her more memorable moments.

I held my breath watching some of her more cringe-worthy crashes.  A mutilated knee or a broken arm, being airlifted from the slopes.  Injuries that could have ended many careers but not hers.  She chose to work to overcome and compete in one more Olympic game…and dedicated it to her grandfather.  You would think people could cut her a little slack.

I admit to cringing, too, when it became newsworthy that she was dating Tiger Woods but then again, he is the Tiger.  I’ve made a few missteps when it came to affairs of the heart…I think.  At my age, it’s a bit hard to remember.  I do remember that none were newsworthy.

But oh my, she made the worst mistake of her life.  When asked a question, she told the truth.  “Well, I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the President.”   She further went on to disparage the President by saying that she wouldn’t go to the White House if she won.  How bold and audacious…how completely unpatriotic, to tell the truth when asked the question.  She was racing for her country, herself and her recently deceased grandfather…but, not the President.

Can we not overlook a little faux pas?  Can we not overlook not racing for our President or visiting him if she won?  Can we not give her some thumbs up for standing by her beliefs even if we disagree with them?  Must we boycott or cry out for cancellation because someone doesn’t agree with our position?

Was it so egregious, we cannot give a pass to a woman who has been an inspiration to other young women…and men I would guess?  Can we not give her a participation trophy for doing her best?  Can we not just say “Thanks for the efforts?”  No, she was refusing to go to the White House, and for some reason, it is an unpatriotic travesty.  Many are happy…an ungrateful US athlete failed.

I wonder if any Olympic athlete woke up this morning and said to themselves, “This one’s for you Donnie T?”  Another question might be, “Should they?”  Are we so filled with hatred we must glorify OUR athletic failures for answering a question with truth?  Should all athletes just give up their First Amendment rights, just because they are athletes?  I would say our friendly Russian trolls have done their jobs well…or maybe they didn’t really have to.

Don Miller writes on varying subjects, not all are subjects that bother him so.  If interested you can find him at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

WINNERS AND LOSERS…but not really

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

I’ve seen so much written and spoken, negatively, about the Rio Olympics and admit to falling into the same negativity with the Zika virus, dead body parts found in beach sand, fecal matter in ocean water, the hidden favelas, participants robbed at gun point and, on a lighter note, how much side boob or butt crack some of our beach volley ball players might be showing. No I was not negative about our volley ball players and MORE than JUST appreciated the buff female forms in bikinis, stretching and diving athletically for their sport. I really don’t understand why people involved in high levels of athletics are not supposed to look good doing it, male or female, without coming under so much public scrutiny. Originally weren’t the first Olympics performed au naturale? Here’s to the good old days…oh wait…they were male only? Let’s just forget that idea. I was also negative about how much the Olympics actually pulled the world’s people together and wondered if any of us were burning with the fire of the Olympic flame as we ridiculed “outspoken” people wearing hijabs or failing to put their hands over their hearts.

In my first attempt at writing badly, Winning was Never the Only Thing, I attempted to convey the idea that sports was more about the people who participated in athletic endeavors than the act of winning itself. Whether it was winning a game or losing an event, paramount was recognizing that even the losers put forth great effort…and display a “winning” effort. No I don’t believe everyone should get a trophy but everyone should be recognized for the effort that they put in to “winning or losing” and just not for the winning. Simone Biles, Simone Manuel, Michael Phelps and the rest of the medal winners should be praised for their accomplishments but what embodies the Olympic Spirit, and winning in general, for me, was exemplified when Abbey D’Agostino of the United States and Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand became tangled with each other in the five thousand meters. After Hamblin went down, D’Agostino tripped over her and also fell to the ground. Though the US runner’s leg was badly injured, the runners helped each other to their feet, and Hamblin cheered on the American as she stumbled, in obvious pain with an Olympics’ ending knee injury, to the finish line…in last place. After finishing, both runners embraced in what ABC’s WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS would have called “the agony of defeat.” I would call it displaying a “gold medal” attitude despite the fact I could hardly see the display due to the tears in my eyes. On the same day, Haitian hurdler Jeffery Julmis face planted on the first hurdle in the one-tens losing any chance of a medal. Instead of staying down in humiliation, Julmis untangled himself and completed the race to finish last…because finishing must be important.

Are there really any losers in the Olympics? I’m not sure we could call the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team “world class” but they did qualify and later had a movie made about them. The same year Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, Great Britain’s “heroic loser” finishing last in the seventy and ninety-meter ski jumps but also had a movie made about his efforts. How can “losing” be important enough to have a movie made about it? More to the point I ask “Is Carrie Walsh a loser for not winning the gold in 2016…after two golds in previous Olympics?” The same could be asked about Gabby Douglas, who won an individual gold in 2012 but didn’t in 2016. I think the answer is no…and would add all the non-medal finishers to my list, BUT NO THEY DON’T GET TROPHIES FOR PARTICIPATING.

I am proud of what the United States has done and the legends we have been made but I am also proud of the losers too. To make the Olympics is a major accomplishment and all of the athletes deserve our heart-felt applause if they display the “Spirit of the Olympics.” Despite the comments of a certain US soccer goalie and the failure of an Egyptian to shake an Israeli’s hand, most participants have kept their “humility” in both victory and in defeat despite the inappropriate saying “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” Show me a good loser and I’ll show you an Olympian.

For more of Don Miller’s unique outlook on life please click on the following link to purchase a book, view links to his blog or just to follow. Thank you. https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM