The True Sporting Heroes

One of the oft repeated statements during my "art of living" foundation course was "Don't get disturbed by winning or losing.Take them in your stride". Short statement, strong message and more importantly, very difficult to practice for many of us. As for myself, I try to ensure that winning doesn't affect me. However, defeats do affect me. The time of recovery from defeat for me is directly proportional to how involved I was in the cause.This post shall be about those sporting heroes who turned things around from nowhere and refused to get bogged down by a setback. I take lot of inspiration from these people and incidents.

When we should be thankful to God (Thiest, that's me :)) that we are born without any physical deformities, we don't let go an opportunity to crib about the slightest disappointment. Consider someone who was diagnosed with testicular cancer but still managed to carry on, turn his career graph upside down and consistently win the toughest test of endurance in Tour de France. Yes, I'm talking about the one and only Lance Armstrong.



Lance hasn't just stopped with winning. His foundation works earnestly towards helping Cancer patients. Guess, people would be familiar with wrist bands introduced for this purpose. Lance was a source of inspiration to Corina Morariu, a former Doubles World Number 1 in Tennis who made a remarkable recovery from Leukamia in 2001. Ivan Klasnic, Croatian footballer scored a goal against Poland in Euro 2008 after getting his kidney transplanted for the second time.

Alright, maybe we cannot really relate to these dreadful situation. If it has got to do with motivation, consider Zinedine Zidane. From nowhere, France became a force to reckon with in footballing world, thanks to Zidane's heroics in 1998 World Cup. Zizou won all coveted footballing honours, world player, champions league, Euro and World cup. Understandbly, his hunger would have subsided and he retired in 2004. However, when his nation needed him most before World cup 2006, he made a comeback and took over the captaincy of a team in trouble, slitted by administrators and media alike. Les Bleus were on the brink of elimination at the group stage when Zizou started weaving his magic. From then on, the fairy tale began and was abruptly ended when the player used his head (quite literally) to get the better of Materazzi. Still, it marks one of the most inspiring stories in football. Without Zidane, France now look like a fish out of water is a testimony to the influence he had.



Zidane was on the losing side, alright. However, the winning team on that night, Italy was on the verge of a miraculous transformation; from a nation dirtied in calciopoli, match fixing and drug scandals to World Champions. Thus, what's inside us matters much more than what's behind us or ahead of us. Inspiration can come from anywhere, Liverpudlians yelling "You'll never walk alone" stirred the greatest comeback in club football when Liverpool overturned a 3 goal deficit to steal the Champions League trophy from under the nose of AC Milan in 2005.



It was a disappointing night for me yesterday with Federer conceding his crown to Nadal. However, I was thrilled to see Fed push Nadal till the end. There is no shame in going down fighting. I believe a true champion leaves an indelible remark in fans in the manner in which they bounce back from a setback. I'm confident that the moment when the Swiss master comes back with a bang is not that far and am looking forward to it. After all, "The greatest glory is not in never falling, but from rising each time you fall"



An interesting link I got related to these comeback kings and queens:

http://www.winnipegsun.com/Sports/Top10/2007/10/14/4574886-sun.html