I am currently obsessed with the Olympics. Luckily for me, I am on Paris time, so all events are real-time and live. I feel part of the action, drawn into the speculation of gold and glory. But I recognize that it is only a facade. Sport, to a spectator, is a minor truth and a major lie.
Imagine a fine dining experience – a 10-course meal of decadence and deliciousness. Every 15 minutes, a new dish of supreme artistic quality and surreal taste appears before us. It seems so effortless, but it is a symphony of difficulty. Behind the scenes, the service staff and kitchen collaborate in harmony, backed by hundreds of hours of teamwork and development and thousands of hours of practice and culture-building. As customers, we experience only the end product, unaware of the dedication, passion, and tribulations involved.
Sport is the same. The reality is 99% practice and 1% competition. It is countless hours of difficulty and pain followed by mere moments of glory – if at all. It is one champion and hundreds of forgotten competitors. We watch a Gold Medal match or final, feeling intense and alive without fully experiencing the mind-consuming pressure and stomach-churning anxiety. We show up for the competition without a thought of the travel, training, and treatment. Like the restaurant-goer, we get only the dish, not the full experience.
Real sport is supreme sacrifice. It is acceptance of being broken down to our most fundamental mental and physical core. It is recognition that we will only be cheered for 1% of the time, while the other 99% we must practice in solace. It is countless hours of repetitive and monotonous training, followed by more time of treatment and travel.
So why do it? Because we learn more about ourselves through hardship than through happiness. Because being broken down provides the opportunity to get back up. Because difficult trials are worth achieving precisely because they are difficult; if it were easy, everyone would do it. Most of all, because it is fulfilling. Sport is a wise teacher with much to teach. Will you listen?
