First off, let it be made very clear that, in making this the subject of this column, there was never any intention to mock or add to the pain and anguish Fil-Am trackster Kristina Knott and those close to her may have felt over her humiliating loss in women's 200 meters in Tokyo. I am fully aware of the many bright spots in our Olympic participation I could have written about.
But there are very valuable lessons to be learned from the Knott experience that may no longer be relevant if put off to a much later date. We can talk of our triumphs till we get old, but the lessons we can learn today from our failure we need to learn already. Allow time to heal the wounds and we become complacent.
Knott placed 5th and dead last in Heat 7 of the women's 200 meters. But it is not the losing or the losing so badly that I take issue with. In any race there has to be only one winner. In a field of, say, seven runners, six will eventually have to endure varying degrees of losing. In every game therefore you have to steel yourself for that possibility.
But more than anything else, you have to enter the race with the heart and mind of a winner. You have to give up your life to be first at the finish line. Anything less than that and you will collapse under the weight of all expectations, those of your countrymen as well as your own. When you give your all, you can be proud even if you lose. You can hold your head up high because, more than anything, you learned self-respect.
In an endeavor when attitude is everything, Knott just did not have it. She did not go to win but merely to improve on her personal best. "I am tired of running 23s. If it is 22.9 I will take it," Knott said going into Tokyo. Why did we send someone with an attitude like that to the Olympics? In the Olympics every competitor has primed himself or herself for that one moment of reaching for the sun. We need winning attitudes not ready losers.
Now compare the attitude of Knott to that of the gold medal winner in the men's 400-meter hurdles, the Norwegian Karsten Warholm. Prior to the race, Warholm was shown on TV screaming repeatedly, his face red, his fists clinched. You knew immediately a guy with an attitude like that would win. And he did. In record time. Such attitude is even infectious. He pulled the rest of the field into breaking their own national records. Winners all.
Or we need not even go far. Hidilyn Diaz, going into Tokyo, said she will be putting on a show. And what a show she did put up. Thankfully, except for that rower who, like Knott, did not go to win but merely to make it to maybe sixth place, the rest of the Philippine contingent made up their minds and steeled their hearts into giving it their all. And all of them played creditably, making us proud just by their performance.
Still, losing by placing last was not the worst of the Knott experience. After the race, she blamed the 40 degree heat for her loss, ignoring the fact that there were four other women with her in that race, or that there were six other qualifying races just before hers, with none of the sprinters being spared from the sun, including many from the temperate or cold countries. Everybody else took the sun as part of the rigors of sacrifice.