Do you know these people?
Mouhssin Chehibi, Maria de Lurdes Mutola, Michael East, Lidia Chojecka, Zersenay Tadesse, Irina Mikitenko, Joseph Fabiano, Megumi Tanaka, Samson Ramadhani, Ros Beatriz
Probably not. I havenít chosen them randomly, of course. It turns out that these men and women are some of the finest athletes in world history.
Each of them could run you or I into the ground without even breaking much of a sweat. And they all share a common characteristic: each finished in the
middle of their final races in the 2004 Olympic games.
| Event |
Men's Finisher |
Time |
Winning Time |
Women's Finisher |
Time |
Winning Time |
| 800 meters |
Mouhssin Chehibi |
1:45.16 |
1:44.45 |
Maria de Lurdes Mutola |
1:56.51 |
1:56.38 |
| 1500 meters |
Michael East |
3:36.33 |
3:34.18 |
Lidia Chojecka |
3:59.27 |
3:57.90 |
| 5000 meters |
Zersenay Tadesse |
13:24.31 |
13:14.39 |
Irina Mikitenko |
15:03.36 |
14:45.65 |
| 10000 meters |
Joseph Fabiano |
28:01.94 |
27:05.10 |
Megumi Tanaka |
31:42.18 |
30:24.36 |
| Marathon |
Samson Ramadhani |
2:20:38 |
2:10:56 |
Ros Beatriz |
2:41:51 |
2:26:20 |
Think about it. By no stretch of the imagination could we call them failures. Each is among the very top athletes in their respective
countries in 2004. They have won races, been among the very elite. In addition to their running, they each have other interests, families,
successful lives. But in Athens in 2004, at the day and time of their events, they were average.
Thatís the way it is. Every time you move up a level, the competition gets tougher. And when the competition gets tougher, sometimes you don't perform
as well as you wanted or as well as you knew you could. And at every level, there will be people who had excelled at a lower level, only to find they can
do no better than average at the next. It's not a reflection of your intrinsic self-worth - it's just how you performed at a given task at a given time.
This is the way the Universe works; I didn't make the rules, I just have to live by them like everybody else.
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