“The Agony of Defeat”

         It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when.
         You can’t win them all.  Nobody can, not even Eddy Merckx, the greatest winner cycling has ever seen.  In more than 1,800 races, Eddy lost nearly 1,300 times.  By the same token, in baseball even the best hitters fail 7 tries out of 10.  Pete Rose, the most prolific hitter of all time, is also history’s most prolific out maker.
         So for you and me, for people whose athletic prowess falls somewhere below the level of legendary, our prospects are even more fully shaded with defeat from the beginning of our competitive lives until the end.  We might, on a good day, a day when we are Fortune’s darling, manage a surprise victory.  Sometimes even the domestiques and water carriers shine, but not often.  Don’t get used to it.
         The challenge for us all, then, from you and me to Merckx, is dealing with defeat, a challenge which some have met with cleverness, ingenuity and courage, sometimes even with wisdom -- though not always.
         From among the many ways wise riders deal with loss, I want to mention but three:  First, wise athletes sometimes process defeat by redefining the nature of the contest, thereby redefining not only loss but victory as well.  Instead of competing against others, they begin instead to compete against themselves, in which case victory equals meeting your personal goals rather than finishing first; it means improvement, not necessarily a place on the podium or a medal around the neck.  Under that rubric, defeat becomes failure to meet your objective, even if you happen to finish first.  Under that rubric defeat becomes personal stagnation or regression -- which doesn’t make defeat any easier to handle.  Indeed, it might make defeat even more stark and uncompromising because when the contest moves inside, externals grow less important, less determinative.  Plausible excuses become more slippery, more elusive.  You and you alone are more likely what went wrong, regardless of how well or how poorly other athletes fared in the same contest.  When you race against yourself, if you fail, YOU fail. 
         The great advantage attached to racing against yourself, however, is that you have an intimate knowledge both of your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.  You know precisely where, when, and how to attack such a rider to maximum effect.  But if you fail so to attack, the ignoble and unflattering cause is almost always your own cowardice and failure of will.  You were afraid you might fail, afraid to face the real you, and you therefore shied away from the battle.  You chose not to fight, as if the failure to compete courageously and well were not itself a defeat.  When you race against yourself, the attacker and the attackee share a common character and a common set of strengths and weaknesses, which makes victory both more easy and more difficult.
         Second, wise athletes sometimes handle defeat best by refusing to identify their best day, their occasional victory, as their standard day, as their norm.  They are not bewitched by their best days because they know who they really are.  Because they do, they spare themselves the tyranny of unfounded and unrealistic expectations, a seedbed in which only frustration, anxiety, anger, jealousy and bitterness can grow.  For example, they know after a day of outstanding tennis that they are not really the player whose every baseline volley was an object lesson in effective power and graceful quickness, whose every second serve could take the apple off the head of William Tell’s kid, and whose every passing shot seemed supernaturally directed.  They remind themselves not to flatter themselves.  They consciously call to mind the obvious facts about themselves, just in case the seduction of victory seems too powerful:  “You are not a tennis god; you cannot win Wimbledon; this is not the real you.”  They remind themselves of these fundamental realities because they know that their defeats will be more bitter, more galling, and more frequent if they succumb to the delusions of the good day. 
         Wise athletes understand that what you are on your best day is not what you really are, any more than your worst days are the real you.  Those rare days on the bike when you carve every corner as if you were Davis Phinney, when you dance over every climb as if you were Federico Bahamontes, when you power across the flats like Francesco Moser, or when you overcome every unimaginable and unforeseeable adversity as if you were Johan Museeuw -- those rare days are to be taken for what they really are:  a gift, a momentary grace, a passing excellence, and not an indication of enduring, personal athletic transcendence.  If you fall prey to the seductive lie of your best days, you will find yourself more aggrieved, more disillusioned, and perhaps eventually outside the sport, because when you magnify the nature of your victories, you magnify the nature of your losses as well.  Your losses become more towering, more crushing, more disjointing and more discouraging than they really are.
         Third, the wise athlete meets defeat with renewed effort, both physically and mentally.  To wise competitors, the important thing is not what defeat does with you, but what you do with defeat.  Wise athletes turn the stumbling block of loss into a stepping stone to victory.  When they fall down, they get up.  They know that in the end you get what you settle for, and they simply won’t settle for anything less than their level best, period.  They know that the contest is not lost until it’s over, and for them it’s never over.  They analyze and re-analyze their training, their tactics, their attitude, and their toughness.  While they do not welcome defeat, they learn from it.  They know that in some ways defeat is the most perfect coach of all, one that will tell you honestly and without any false or flattering tact just exactly what are your weaknesses and soft spots, just where you’ve been lazy or inattentive, and precisely what chinks your athletic armor really has.  While your victories sometimes flatter you, your defeats seldom do.
         Thank God for your defeats. 
         But never be content with them.

date modified:
5 July 2006