Winning isn’t everything

Tokyo Olympics demonstrated the importance of mental health over the victory, sharing over individual winning, athletes underscored the values of camaraderie, emotional quotient, and being human, despite superhuman performances. In many ways this year’s Olympics was a milestone.

India’s Olympians have scripted some very inspiring stories. Each of our athletes, regardless of whether they were on the victory stand or not, left their mark on the most prestigious sporting event on the planet. The country had a silver-lined start with Mirabai Chanu, to the golden moment of Neeraj Chopra and everything in between, India achieved its best ever medal haul, in an event held under the shadows of the pandemic. As I watched the performance of our Indian sportspersons in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, what struck me hard was that a large number of them battled through cruel childhoods, overcame extreme poverty, and monumental odds, to reach the world’s most prestigious sporting arena. While Cricket in India has achieved spectacular success, making millionaires out of a lot of players, other sports, including Hockey, have languished, with sportspersons coming from the most underprivileged sections of our society.

In our country, parents feel sports is a waste of time; rather their children should focus on studying hard to get a degree in engineering, an MBA or becoming a doctor. The goal is to get a green card, not to put the ball in the net. I don’t fault them. There is no career in sports in India – that’s the harsh reality. ?Every time the Olympics are held, we indulge in mindless debates around an irrational correlation between the size of our population and the number of medals. As I looked for answers trying to figure out the heart of the problem, I realized that we cannot succeed in sports till such time we visualize it as a career path from school onwards, through to university, leading to the national and eventually to the international arena. Sports have offered an escape route from poverty for many; but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Talking about some of the most signifecent moments, On 20the July 2021, the Olympics motto was changed to "Citius, Altius, Fortius - Communiter." It means "faster, higher, stronger - together." Simone Biles, the ace US gymnast, arguably one of the finest in the world has changed the Olympics for all times to come. She might just have added another Latin phrase to it, "sanitatem mentis", it stands for mental health. Simone left the stage as she felt that she needed to prioritize her mental health over the victory stand. A couple of months before Simone dropped out of the gymnastics events, the Japanese tennis star and world No 2, Naomi Osaka, quit the French Open following her first-round victory, citing anxiety issues, after refusing to face the customary post-match press conference. We respected Simone and Naomi, we admired them.

We witnessed the elation of sharing achievements.?The 2020 Olympics saw for the first time since 1912 a gold medal shared in athletics when Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim added Olympic gold to his list of accolades — and persuaded organizers to share it with his friend and rival, Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi, in the men’s high jump event.

Never before has the Olympics symbolized its truest spirit as did this year. Suddenly, the world has realized that not everything has to be about being the best, beating others; or rivalry. We stood up to applaud those who opted out of the victory stand. We didn’t call them losers. It was about being human. We finally grasped that athletes are not superhuman machines, created by coaches and state machinery to glorify and symbolize national pride; but humans who are reaching their physical limits.

For far too we have borrowed phrases and words from the sporting arena and military playbooks, to glorify beating the competition, grabbing market shares, having ice water in our veins, fighting an uphill battle, reinforcing defenses, fighting back – strong masculine terms to pump the adrenalin. No one talked about ‘it’s okay to fail,’ ‘it’s all right not to feel okay,’ or ‘winning isn’t everything.’ I feel it is time for us to change the vocabulary, to realize that we can find immense joy in doing things together, in collaborating. The pandemic has made us understand that– winning is pointless, unless all of us survive and thrive together; it’s about ‘Communiter.’