Grace in the Face of Defeat

I am inspired by stories of perseverance and teamwork.

I am humbled by stories of grace in the face of defeat.

And I love it when perseverance, teamwork and grace merge and the moments that created them are witnessed by large numbers of people who are together moved by what they are witnessing.


Have you seen this video? A colleague at work sent it to me along with a string of others. His subject line was: A video worth watching.

In the body of his email he wrote to us all: "I don’t normally pass things along to everyone but this is just too special. You may have seen it. It is called “Touching them All” and it is about women’s softball. Watch it and see if you can keep from crying."

The back story to the video is this: When Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky hit her first career home run in one of the last games of the softball season, something odd happened. She missed the bag at first and when she doubled back to touch it, her knee gave out. Her teammates were unable to help her around the bases so it looked like her only career home run would turn into a single. Then a member of the other team, a senior with knee problems of her own, said: "Excuse me, would it be OK if we carried her around and she touched each bag?"



Or how about this video from the 1992 Barcelona Games featuring British sprinter Derek Redmond running in the 400-meter race? It's as much about the father as it is the son.

I was inspired to put this blog entry together after reading Mitch Albom's article, "The Heart of the Games," in Parade Magazine. Parade comes to my home weekly with my Sunday newspaper. I had never heard of Mitch Albom until a Canadian friend told me about his book, "The Five People You Meet In Heaven." She mentioned it in one of our first on-line chats. I didn't know Mitch has been a sports columnist for decades!

I appreciated his article so much that I excerpt part of it below in this blog adding pictures where I could find them. Enjoy!



Defeat meant something different to a young marathoner named Aguida Amaral, from war-torn East Timor, where violence left her home burned and her running shoes ruined. In Sydney in 2000, she had to compete in a plain white jersey under the Olympic flag. Near the end of the 26-mile race, despite being more than 47 minutes behind the winner, she was so grateful to have made it that, after running into the stadium, she dropped to her knees in prayer. An official gently informed her that she still had to circle the track to finish, so she rose to cheers and did so, then kissed the ground.

By the way, Amaral finished second from last, proving that the best stories are often far from the medal stand.

There was the image of a Nigerian woman named Glory Alozie, flying over the hurdles in the Sydney Games en route to a silver medal. What the picture didn’t show was the heavy heart she carried over those hurdles, having lost the love of her life—her sprinter fiancé, Hyginus Anugo—just a few weeks earlier in that same city, after he was killed by a speeding car while running to get snacks for his teammates.

So the Olympics are this massive, colorful tapestry. And simple math tells us there will be more than 10,000 athletes competing in Beijing, and relatively few of them will make it to your TV screen. But every Olympian has an Olympic story. Sometimes they end on a medal stand. And sometimes you have to look a bit harder to find gold. Trust me. It is well worth the search.