My four-year-old daughter Kristie mimics Michael Phelps’ freestyle stroke while going down her Little Tikes plastic slide and performs somersaults on the carpet while watching Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin in women’s gymnastics.
My wife Quyen has been staying up till midnight getting her fill of swimming, gymnastics, diving and track and field. She screamed at the top of her lungs at every competition Phelps swam, almost willing him to the eight gold medals he captured in an unprecedented display of swimming dominance. She held her breath as Shawn Johnson did backflips on the balance beam to capture gold in her last competition at Beijing.
And while I admired the speed, strength, endurance and grace of the above victors and marveled at the lightning on the track of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, my heart went out to those who experienced disappointment.
To Alicia Sacramone, who bit her lower lip to keep herself from breaking into tears after falling off the balance beam and going out of bounds in the floor exercise that cost her team a chance at gold in the team competition in women’s gymnastics. To the women’s 100-meter hurdler Lolo Jones who, ahead at the ninth hurdle, clipped it, lost her balance and any hope of winning the most important race of her life.
To Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, who couldn’t compete in the 110-meter men’s hurdles after sustaining an Achilles’ tendon injury and brought an entire nation to tears. To Felix Sanchez, so distraught after learning of his grandmother’s death, that he nearly walked off the starting blocks of the 400-meter hurdles preliminaries and ended up finishing last.
To me, it didn’t matter that these athletes fell short of victory because they showed me that competition isn’t about gold medals. It’s about what’s inside—dealing with adversity and disappointment and holding your head high even in the midst of tears. It’s about the spirit of competition and representing your country to the best of your abilities. And that says a whole lot more about you than any trinket of metal around your neck.
Ray lives in California with his wife and kids.
