Why sport matters
Inspired by the 2020(1) Olympic athletes.
After procrastinating for most of the evening, I made my way down to our apartment building’s gym for a workout. It was cardio day, which is never my favorite.
I put the Olympics coverage on the gym TVs in the background, figuring that seeing elite athletes on the screen would push me to work a little harder.
Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash
So, there I was on the treadmill, feeling like a hamster on a hamster wheel. Women’s gymnastics was on. I’d turned off the TV audio in favor of my own tunes, so all I saw was the competing athletes, and all I heard was my own music. (This time around it was Girl Talk’s All Day—super fun, and if you’ve never heard it I highly, highly encourage it!)
This audio/video setup resulted in quite a different viewing experience than I’d expected. I couldn’t hear the commentators analyzing what was going on, explaining how difficult or easy something was, or casting judgment on the gymnasts’ execution. And without the commentators to shape my interpretation of what was happening, I saw each gymnast in a different light: as a regular person who had decided to take an extraordinary life journey.
I could almost feel each gymnast’s anxiety—and courage in the face of it—walking onto one of the biggest sports stages in the world to perform on behalf of their team and their country. I saw the gymnasts give all they had in each performance, despite knowing they’d likely face both criticism and celebration. Most of them bobbled or stumbled at least once, and a couple even fell.
But they all kept going. They were relentless.
And as I watched these incredible women athletes, it really dawned on me why sport is so important.
Sport gives us everyday heroes: otherwise ordinary people who have a goal in mind and have pushed through seemingly unconquerable physical and mental hurdles to achieve it; people who have invested their heart and soul and risked everything, win or lose; people who have made themselves totally vulnerable to all who are watching them; people who fail all the time, and get up to try again and again.
These people have an indomitable spirit.
But most importantly: these people also remind us that we might have that same fighting spirit inside ourselves.
And doesn’t that just give you a jolt of inspiration?
Epilogue: I did, in fact, run a little longer and a little faster than I’d originally planned. Woo!