The Sun is again at dusk for the Summer Olympic Games as it approaches its finale, and it will not rise again for another 4 years. So as the largest sporting event on Earth comes to a temporary closure, our minds cannot help but wander back to the December of 1945 when George Orwell published his famous essay for the Tribune, The Sporting Spirit.
The essay was written in response to the visit of the Moscow Dynamos football team in Britain, which had caused much tension between the Russian and the British. Orwell had expressed his clear disproval of sports and the sporting spirit in his essay, describing the whole concept of sports as a “war minus the shooting”. However, he had failed to look beyond the exceptionally politicized context of those times and see the true sporting spirit, the one which has continuously inspired the human race for millennia.
Reader’s Digest Asia recently published a series of articles entitled “True Spirit, Stirring Tales of Olympic Sportsmanship”. This article series captured some of the finest moments in the modern Olympics history, and I want to share with you here one of the best. It is a recount written by Jesse Owens in 1960 on his encounter with a German competitor, Luz Long, in the 1936 Olympics. That period in time was marked by high racial tensions, a stumbling block for a Negro athlete like Jesse Owens. Owens’ nervousness had gotten the better of him during the long jump trials, in which he fouled 2 out of 3 tries. However, Luz Long spoke to him, comforting him and allowing him to drain away his nervousness, and Jesse not only qualified, but went on to win the long jump title. Luz had broken through all barriers of racism and rivalry, and even with Hitler only a hundred meters away, they shook hands.
It is stories like these that define the sporting spirit, and breathe life into it. These tales, told or untold, will continue to be an inspiration for people around the globe, and in this age where so many boundaries are drawn in red and trespassers prosecuted, sports prove itself to be capable of transcending these borders. True, there are ugly moments, moments men will scorn for decades, but this ugliness is not sole to sports alone and can be reflected at every strata of the society. However, the beauty and the inspiration that arises out of sports is a limited edition that no other activities can ever bring. It brings to light the highest quality of the human soul and touches the human heart. This is then, the true sporting spirit.
The next aspect of sports which I would like to give credit to is what I like to call the pathos of sports. Pathos is a Greek word commonly referring to extreme pain and suffering, but its true meaning cannot be totally retained in translation, and yet it can also describes the feeling we get when we watch this following kind of experience so accurately that no English word can match.
During Day 3 of the Athletics events in the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, the woman’s marathon was finished in high drama. Great Britain’s Paula Radcliffe, the current world record holder, limped past the finish line in tears. She had finished 23rd, having suffered a leg cramp late in the race after competing in the chase group for most of the race. Two miles away from finish, she had to draw to the sides to stretch her calf. Her anguish was carved on her face, but holding her bad leg and gritting her teeth, she limped on towards the stadium and the finishing line. During a press conference with BBC later on, she was quoted saying this - "I was going to get to the finish line no matter what, because that was my race." In another story of the same event, British marathoner Liz Yelling fell horribly 10 miles into the race and was sent to hospital for check up. She later came back to finish 26th.
George Orwell once described the cruelty of competition, where the failed are scorned and forgotten. Put in his own words, “people want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated”. As far as I know, this was not the case in the Woman’s Marathon, and it is not the case in many of the sporting events held. In light of intense pain, Radcliffe and Yelling put up a valiant fight, and even though they did not win, their efforts were applauded by the general audience, regardless of which competitive side they were in. These are just 2 stories, and they are not the only 2. We pity these men and women for their tears, and yet respect them for their undying spirit, and this spirit will always go on to inspire those who are brought down to fight back.
As the Games gets even more commercialized and politicized, we can sometimes be blinded by the disdain for this commercialization and politicization, and misjudge the true sporting spirit. At the end of it all, we must ponder, what is it that is in this spirit that mankind continuously uphold for thousands of years? Competition is an essential ingredient to development and improvement. And in sports, it was possible to gaze upon the extent human soul and will, and see previously thought impossible being written into reality, but from the awe and the admiration will sprout new hopes and seed new ambitions for the next generation to achieve even greater heights. This is then, the true sporting spirit.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment