The World Athletic Championships were held in Budapest and among the highlights was waiting to see if Team Canada could repeat its gold medal win in the 4x100-metre relay. They won the 2022 event in Eugene, Oregon and were tied for the world-leading time, but unfortunately they didn't make it into the final.
The team is having quite a year. These men recently received an Olympic silver medal in a reallocation ceremony at the Canadian championships held last month in BC. At the Tokyo Olympics they were awarded the bronze, but a doping violation by the second place finishers led to a disqualification and Canada was elevated to a silver medal.
Getting your rightful medal years later is something other athletes are familiar with including Canadian skier Beckie Scott. At the Salt Lake City Olympics, she finished third in the combined pursuit. While it was a bronze that was placed around her neck during the Games, in the months that followed her medal was elevated to silver when the gold medalist tested positive for a banned substance. But the story didn't end there. The new gold medalist also tested positive, so 2 ½ years after the race, Scott was awarded the gold in a ceremony that took place on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The list of athletes stripped of medals is lengthy so there are many competitors out there familiar with not getting the moment on the podium they earned. It came later, in a substitute ceremony, far from the attention that comes with the Olympic spotlight at the time.
Published accounts from many Olympic Games have incorrect medalists named because it takes time for drug testing or other violations to move through the various levels of arbitration and discipline. Future publications can be updated but many contain the story before it was truly completed.
Then again, that's true for us all. Our stories are still unfolding. A result that is currently true may in fact be subject to change, perhaps because of the actions of others, or because of a change in direction that allows us to influence the outcome. The world may see one aspect of our story but there could be a lot more coming.
Since we've been talking about the accomplishments of athletes, here are some who didn't let an earlier chapter be the definer of their story.
Consider gymnast Simone Biles. Early labels included foster child and child of biological mother who struggled with addiction. But her adoption and introduction to sports wrote subsequent chapters that included Olympian and becoming known as the greatest gymnast of all time.
Basketball player Caron Butler began dealing drugs at age 11 and was arrested 15 times by the age of 15. That trajectory may have continued were it not for a detention centre in which he was held where he discovered his talent for basketball. A college scholarship led to a 14-year career in the NBA where he was a two-time All Star.
Then there’s Yusra Maldini. She is a Syrian swimmer who had the support of her country’s Olympic Committee but as her homeland grew more unsafe she had to give up her training. Despite the odds stacked against her she refused to give up on her Olympic dreams. She fled to Turkey and then headed to Greece in a boat filled with 20 other refugees. When the engine failed she swam and helped drag the boat to safety in a three-hour ordeal. Being a refugee wasn’t where she would allow her story to end. Hero and Olympian were next and she’s just getting started.
What others see us do is rarely the full story. But we can get stuck—stuck with labels that have been attached, stuck in circumstances we have little control over, or unable to achieve our hopes because of the interference or unfairness of others. It happens. And it might take time for the full story to be revealed. But those that succeed are the ones who work hard to keep the story going. For Beckie Scott the story did not culminate in elevated medals. She went on to be an advocate for fairness in sport and contributed to the work of the world anti-doping agency. Simone Biles has done tremendous work in the area of mental illness, and so much more.
What we confront today is not an indicator of what our life will look like a few months or years from now. It is just an aspect of a story that is very much unfolding. What matters is that we keep turning the pages and moving on to all that will come next.
A new day means a new chance to strive for the next goal. We may not have the kind of impact we would ultimately like, but giving our best effort and acting in fairness and with integrity creates what really matters…our own golden moment. That is the one that worries less about the outcome and far more about the output. That’s my outlook.
