THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
One of the great war-cries among boys of a certain age, when they have fallen foul of yesterday’s best friend, is to mutter with clenched jaw and fists: “Loser!”
How often have you said to your children at some school sporting event, “Go out there and do your best”, when you, in fact, really mean: “Go out there and knock the socks off them and bring home that trophy – and then we’ll see about McDonald’s?”
Thought so …
As Public Enemy noted in their song Rumbo N Da Jungo, “nobody loves a loser ‘cos a loser lives alone …”
Those of us with memories old enough still recall Ireland’s Italia ‘90. Today, we marvel at our victories in ladies’ football and GAA and our prowess in rugby and cricket. Kelly Harrington. And now, our glorious wins in European Athletics. Who can forget Stadio Olimpico and Ciara Mageean showing remarkable patience and experience to strike 1,500m gold and join the mixed 4×400 relay team of Chris O’Donnell, Rhasidat Adeleke, Thomas Barr and Sharlene Mawdsley as only the third Gold medal winner in the now 90-year history of participation. And then more glory throughout the week. Four medals, national records broken. What a week!
So to Paris, determinedly heading for Gold at the Olympics.
Despite all the rousing rhetoric about representing one’s country and it not being about winning or losing, but how you play the game, when it boils down to it, any great competition is all about winning. Gold is alluring while Silver, well, let’s face it, is a little cheap and Bronze is just downright tacky.
God may love a trier, but we mere mortals want a winner; indeed, demand one, or else, like in those arenas of ancient Rome, it’s a big thumbs down and off with their heads and we swiftly switch our allegiance to the next promising gladiator.
Winners show us the kind of stuff we are all potentially made of, the kind of stuff we can at least aspire to. Winners bring out the best in us.
In the two millennia since the first Olympic Games, one principle has withstood the test of time: we are obsessed with winning and, in our endeavours, pushing the human body to the limit. What does it take to swim the fastest, throw a discus the furthest, or jump the highest? In some sports, it would seem, athletes claim such honours by birthright. Men and women from Kenya’s Great Rift Valley – where I spent some time in 2008 – dominate endurance running, for example, and sprinting sees the Jamaicans taking the honours. Now the Irish are among the greats.
When it comes to the sexes, the presence or absence of the Y chromosome creates a different kind of uneven playing field. Two decades ago, the best female runners were closing in on the times of their male counterparts. But that gender gap has plateaued in the interim in all running events, apart perhaps from the marathon. Tending not to discriminate by gender, are injuries sustained from pushing ourselves to the limit but, according to a report in Science Magazine, young gymnasts may be risking osteoarthritis and other health problems later in life from injuries they get pushing themselves to the ultimate.
On a more positive note, the report says information gained from studying how athletes’ muscles respond to training is providing new insights on muscle growth and atrophy.
In the end, the kind of performance we lesser mortals can merely be in awe of these days very often comes down to mechanics. New materials, spin-offs from the space programmes, can reduce physical constraints to performance. At the Paris Olympics, the world’s best swimmers will be wearing suits with tiny ridges modelled on sharkskin, that are claimed to reduce friction and drag. And so it goes, all in the name of winning.
Who wants a guy who plays just a “respectable” game?
Poor Stella Walsh: she was an Olympic competitor for Poland, winning the Gold in the 100m sprint in 1932, and the Silver in 1936. Walsh set 18 world records in her life, but accusations that she was male dogged her for years and she was forced to undergo a gender check at the 1936 Olympics. Which she apparently passed, despite the fact that, when she was autopsied following her death, it was found that she had male genitalia, along with female characteristics. Further investigation revealed that she had both an XX and an XY pair of chromosomes.
You couldn’t make it up…
