Winning

My wife and I recently attended a sports day of friends child. I have never attended one of these sports days before and it was actually quite good fun and really nice to see the little people running and having fun doing it. while we were there, Bob (the oldest child) who was supporting his brother, said to his mom, "It is not about winning, but about participating that counts".

This struck me as very odd because it is against everything that today's society throws at us. It was amazing to hear and even more amazing to see that he actually believed it. I brushed it off as absolute rubbish but I started to thinking about it. At what point does that belief turn into winning is everything? At what point does that line become second place is first loser?

Today we are seeing professional sports starts getting banned for the use of  banned substance use. Today we see professional cyclists in every country tested both in and out of competition and banned for the use of EPO and other muscle enhancing agents. South African rugby players have been suspected of using banned substances too, although all charges were dropped. Local provincial players have been banned for steroid use. the worst of all this is that recently school boys were found to be using banned substances to enhance their performance on the rugby pitch. 

In this case, it takes less than 10 years to go from "its all about participation" to illegal performance enhancing drug use. Who turns the sentence around? who changes the persons mind? Parents? teachers? Coaches? Television? I do not know.

The full circle turns though and grabs again. Only the top few percent ever get to compete at the professional level. In fact, at any competitive level at all! To the 35 000 cyclists that pack Cape Town streets for the Cape Argus Cycle Tour, less than about 200 riders go for the top honours. That is less than 0.5%. The rest? they do it for participation! The 18 000 comrades runners, only about 50 can win it. You do the math!

In the end, the wisdom of a seven year old boy wins. "Mom, it is not about winning. It is all about the participation".

For the privacy of the family and friends, the names in this blog post have been changed.

The curse of the English sports fan

Off the top of my head I can think of the following sportsmen and women from the UK who are at the top or at least in the top few percentage in their sport.

Lee Westwood and Luke Donald - golf

Jenson button - formula 1

Andy Murray - tennis

Mark Cavendish - possibly the fastest man in professional cycling peloton

A rugby league that attracts the top players from around the world.

Arguably the best football league in Europe, possibly the world.

A cricket league setup that has attracted the top players for many years.

The problem is that they are all cursed! I call it the curse of the English sports fan. Leading up to an event the English people are amazing in getting behind their sports teams / people - messages, dedications, flags on houses etc. That's enviable in my opinion. When I look at reports and the like from outside the country - I get the impression that the fans really believe that their team is the best and will win. The curse sets in when people just through a bit of doubt in when something happens before the event. A lot of it is sensationalism on behalf of the media to get a big story but the rest of it - no idea why it starts.

During the recent French open Andy Murray came up against Raphael Nadal and a twitter message I got (from an English person) was 'Andy Murray thinks he can beat Nadal - sorry Andy you can’t'. That’s ridiculous!! Top sportsmen have to believe they can win and one bit of doubt could mean not winning.

The curse continues after the event too. The media jump in and the people too. The people are very passionate and the support them team / people had goes from completely for to completely against and they play the blame game and blame everybody on the team and their dog before they will accept the truth about the outcome. This the gets buried, only to fester until the next time something happens and the skeletons get dragged out to haunt the next team even generations later!

England has an amazing sporting ability and infrastructure but the same structure that holds it up is tearing it down.

Hard Work Pays Off!

Saturday was a good day and ended very well with a victorious trip to Kings Park to watch my beloved rugby team The Sharks trounce the Lions on home turf!

It was an absolutely perfect night with only a bit of wind around.

Stefan Terblanche got a standing ovation on entering the field for playing 200 games for Natal Rugby! Well done!!

Read more below.

Hard Work Pays Off | News | SharksRugby