Winners

Until the Red Sox rewrote sports and regional history with their too incredible to have been a Hollywood Movie comeback, I thought the best sports stories of the year were
Phil Mikkelson winning the Masters and Hicham el Gerrouj winning the 1500 and 5000 at the Olympics. With apologies to the incredible duo of Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps who made the impossible look routine, I identified more with Mikkelson and el Gerrouj who are as different in appearance as any two athletes could be but were able to eradicate the huge gorilla(too large to be a monkey) off their backs by shedding the totally unfair “loser” tag hoisted on them by our win only society.

As a runner, who frequently has to answer the question from the great unwashed, of “Did you win”, it is always cathartic to see someone who is so far from being a loser shed society’s unfair tag. I have run over 400 races and finished first in exactly two. There were extenuating circumstances in each that I need not get into here but in every race no matter what the distance and no matter how far back I finished I have fought either a winning or losing battle with myself.. Numerous writers have opined about the many “races within a race” and just about ever race I have run contains some competitive moments where I am either trying to catch someone or hold off someone else. Sometimes I win that ace and
Often I lose but I consider myself a great winner for competing. The vast majority of runners would be considered losers by the Mikkelson and El Gerrouj measurement.

For those unfamiliar with their stories , I’ll be brief; Mikkelson, a highly successful golfer who had won scores of titles and won enough money to erase the debt of third world countries wore the heavy mantle of being the greatest golfer never to win a major. Having the unfortunate timing to be competing in the Tiger Woods era and having some untimely misses at key junctures had left Mikkelson staring at an 0 for 48 tag as he entered the last few holes at the hallowed Augusta course. Although he had played well enough to win, his main opponent Ernie Els had been playing unconscious golf and looked ready to deny Mikkelson again until he made pressure packed birdies at three of the final four holes including a putt for the ages on 18 to win by a stroke. He went on to be in the title hunt for the other three major golf events but was unable to win, still he could never be called a loser again.

El Gerrouj had done the impossible in the middle distances. He had stayed on top of the event for a decade. Historically it had been rare for someone to last through two Olympics, yet the torturous defeats El Gerrouj had suffered at the last two Olympics had kept him going. In 1996 at Atlanta, he had come in as the heavy favorite and got tripped and dropped out on the final lap of the 1500. At Sydney he looked certain to win but was caught in the final 10 meters by Bernard Lagat of Kenya. Somehow he made it back for the Athens and finally, in a breathtaking finish got his gold in the 1500. Could anyone have been more joyous at winning a gold? Then as if the exorcism had pushed all the good luck demons to his side, he became the beneficiary of a strange race strategy by heavily favored Kenesia Bekele of Ethiopia., who ran slower in the 5000 than he had in the last 5000 of his gold medal winning effort in the 10,000. With the race gift wrapped to the fastest sprinter, El Gerrouj used his incredible speed to win a most unexpected gold medal and take over the title as greatest middle distance runner in the world. He can now relax and let somebody else try and take his title.
While there is no such thing, in my opinion, as too much commentary of the meaning of the Red Sox triumph, someday it will fade away but hopefully I will be able to continue running and “losing”.