It is always nice to win. Isn’t it? Indeed if it is clear that someone outclasses not only the next player but the whole pack. But sometimes, in sports and other fields, the differences between winners and losers can be minimal, yes, as minuscule as a fraction of a second, or one eight-hundredth of a second, as I think was the case in one competition in the ongoing Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang in South Korea.
Today, I shall discuss some of the illogical aspects in sports. Perhaps we should re-visit the whole field and do something more social and inclusive. It is not given and cut in stone that we have to have competitions and games the way we do today, spending enormous sums of money and time, and indeed young people’s energy, health and more. And then, why is it that we love winners the way we do, in sports and other fields? To be excellent and very good may be important, sometimes. Yet, it is those who are average and ordinary who make the wheels turn in everyday life. Luckily, most of us belong to that group.
But let me come back to the invisible differences sports and other fields, where we compare what is so minuscule that it may become absurd and ridiculous. Why not call it even and shared positions if we cannot see who the winner is by the bare eye? Or, why not use old measurements, when we in a race accepted that one could win, or lose, by a ‘horse head’, today we would say the ‘hair on the horse’s nose’. And since no one could see that, we would also need a ‘goal photo’.
Today, we have let the carriage go ahead of the horse; we have let technology create a fictive, non-existing reality that the human mind cannot see or understand; we are beyond the world’s most accurate Swiss watches, the latest Japanese cameras, the Swedish spy lenses, or American and or Russian futuristic space technology for that matter.
Being a Norwegian, I shouldn’t complain too much, you may say, since in this year’s Winter Olympic Games, Norway is harvesting medals like cherries on a garden tree, more than any other country, last time I saw the medal count. I hope the margins to the next players are a bit wider than one eight-hundredth of a second, because to win by the ’skin of one’s teeth’ is hardly winning. Or is it? And if it is, what is so fantastic about it? And why do we indeed want to win, or do we? Yet, in today’s world we want winners more than ever, ignoring that there then must also be losers, many losers in the elitist fields.
Yes, we have become very good in counting and measuring. As a social scientist, I have always been worried about counting ‘facts’ that are often disputable, measuring and ranking things that cannot really be measured. Well, sometimes it helps us in understanding the world around us, but only if add qualitative aspects and methods to the quantitative ones, as social scientists would say. Common sense and logical reasoning are more important.
In elite sports, indeed in the Olympics, which we call ‘games’, it cannot really be that we only want to measure and count, the way it has become. There must be something more to it. ‘Games’ are meant to be fun and enjoyable, where not only the end result is important, but the whole process of the competition, for the participants, who we call ‘players’, yes, we still call them ‘players’ since they, in theory, take part in ‘games’. And it must be pleasant for the trainers and couches, the spectators, the leaders, the organisers, the media, the business people, and rest, including the royals and politicians who show up, mainly if it can benefit themselves. I hope that they all enjoy and have a good time, even if their players ‘lose’, that is, if they don’t get gold, silver or bronze medals. Otherwise, wasn’t it all a waste of time and money?
When I at the start of my article today ridiculed the minute accuracy we use to distinguish between winners and losers, there was one aspect I didn’t mention, which makes the whole thing even more illogical, notably that all of them are basically equally good. Yet, they still came all the way to PyoengChang to compete in the fifteen categories and disciplines, and about one hundred events in this year’s Winter Olympic Games. At other events in elite sports it is the same, indeed in tennis, golf, and other individual sports disciplines. Yes, sometimes, it is just a handful of players that keep competing year after year. We recall names like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, and so on.
They are all basically equally good, and it is a law of nature that sooner or later, one player will make a mistake or have a mishap, and ‘lose’. The physical and psychological day-form of a player, his or her health and condition on a single day and at a single moment, decide. But is the winner therefore really the winner? Maybe we didn’t really measure what we say we measure? Can’t we find something more entertaining and creative to do in sports, even in elite sports?
In my young years in Norway, when speed skating was the winter sport we were most interested in, there were also just a dozen or so top players that competed. We were glued to the radio to find out who would get the medals, and what fortune or misfortune the excellent sportsmen had. Today, women have become included more than before. On that note, let me recall that in the late 1920s and 1930s, a Norwegian woman named Sonja Henie (1912-1969) was in a category of her own in figure skating, winning some ten world championships in a row, three Olympic gold medals, and six European championships. She became a Hollywood film star, one of the highest paid of the time. Yes, I must admit that I am proud of her, never mind that I go against my own criticism of elitism in sports. Still, I maintain that the whole concept of elite sports is illogical.
Pakistan is a great cricket country; men and women players are among the best in the world, and good is that. Well, it is alright. It makes us all, irrespective of what walk of life we come from, rally around something together. Maybe we could have done more important things, but never mind. We must also be allowed to spend time on what we think is fun and enjoyable, not only on things that are serious and important. Since cricket is a team sport, I have more sympathy for it than the individual sports. But in cricket, too, we must think of how to widen the game to include as many as possible, especially at the lower levels. The elite teams at the top become entertainers and performers, as in all elite sports. Also in individual sports, in speed skating in Norway, skiing, ice dancing, running and wrestling, we must realise that it is more about common community; it is not really about winning. That we should remember in the world we have created, where there is much more competition than we ever needed – and too many losers. The leaders in elite sports, indeed in the International Olympic Committee (IOC), should think about this, and find ways back to more positive ways of organising sports competitions and games.