Some thoughts.
1. Athletes don’t deserve do win or lose: a sport is an institutionalized game. By definition, athletes deserve only fair judging (not winning or losing). Winning or losing, if under fair judging, is neither good or bad.
2. Athletes don’t lose or win because of any moral factor. Our wishes about the outcomes of a game have little to do with it, unless we are a mafia boss and we make decisions as to winning or losing, which is very, very common.
3. If we are not the mafia, then our wishes are just that: wishes. For example: I wish Hugo Quinteiro had deadlifted 400kg yesterday. That is a wish and it is in the realm of fiction. I am sure he would be good for 367.5kg, the all time tested record. It didn’t happen. WHY it didn’t happen is the subject for speculations, since it is cruel to carry out human experiments in this respect. Our educated guess goes to travelling stress (physiological) and acclimatation. Considering this is his third international competition, I estimate he loses between 12-15% performance. That means we need to work on the probably max minus Mpr*0.15 .
4. Losing a game makes those who were wishing for the athlete’s defeat happy. Maybe even very happy. Maybe even sexually aroused, if their masculinity is really a problem (I learned that by watching all seasons of Law & Order SVU). My experience as an athlete, though, suggests that one defeat in a sequence of victories teaches the athlete that he needs to analyze the factors and/or fire his/her coach and advisors. No, it doesn’t teach “humility”.
5. I still don’t get the humility thing. Compassion is cool. Realism, too. Refraining from hurting others is super. Being weary with megalomaniac and paranoid behavior is nice: never good. Ethics and honor top everything, for me. I still fail to understand all the hype over humility.
