First Place and Last Place – should both be celebrated equally?
Having just returned from Cape Town to support the RMB UTCT 100 miler (166km) event, when ‘my’ athlete finished in 33 hours and 18 minutes, at 01:00 in the morning, I noticed something. The race began at 17:00 on Friday. The winner, Fotis Zsimopoulos, was rightly welcomed back onto the field at 13:00 on Saturday, after finishing in time of 20 hours and 48 minutes. He arrived to roars of support, cheering, television cameras and raucous crowds. And man did he deserve it!
However, those runners who started returning at about 19:00 (26 hours after the official start) received no such fanfare. The sports grounds are in a residential area, and the loudspeakers, music and festivities had to stop until the following morning. The bruised, battered, glazed eyed, bone weary runners, who had been out on the mountain in cold, windy, and sometimes near impossible weather conditions for quite literally days, crossed the finish the line to…. nothing. Other than the support of one or two of their family members or friends, and maybe a fellow athlete there was no one to celebrate this remarkable achievement. The field is tiny, and there were large gaps between runners finishing.
Fast forward to Sunday afternoon (yes Sunday!) when prize giving began at 13:00. The official cut off time is 45 hours, and as the announcer was handing out the prizes for the top 3 winners across all the events that had taken place over the weekend, he stopped for a second, and began shouting for us all to go outside to see the last person, Tauriq Noly, finish the race. He was then brought onto the stage to stand with the winners of the events.
I had a very interesting conversation about this with my running partner a week or two after the race. (Could we take a moment to acknowledge that he ran the 100 miler over the weekend and was back running with me the following week?) His views differ to mine, which is usually par for the course! His opinion is that celebrating the last place arrival takes away from the achievements of all the runners who completed in the middle of the night, hours beforehand. Their arrival at the finish is an anti-climax and a bit of a let-down. And that’s from a supporter’s point of view! It was cold, the tent was empty, and everyone wanted to leave as quickly as possible and go home, so I certainly get where he is coming from.
But is this only true for crazy hundred mile races? Let’s look at an example which might be a bit closer to home for some. The Comrades marathon. The crowd support is there, gaining momentum as the day goes on and the stadium fills up with family, friends and supporters as the end draws closer. But, apart from the elite athletes, it’s only the last person who crosses the line at 11:59:59 before the gun goes off, that gets a bunch of flowers and is interviewed on television. Similar story, different circumstances.
My counter argument is that these ‘back of the packers’ give ordinary people who maybe wouldn’t even think about trying an event such as this, hope. In fact, that medal probably means even more to them – they have been out there for 45 hours achieving it – as not only did they fight against brutal weather conditions, like all the participants, but for much longer. They also fought against the clock – and very nearly lost that battle. Imagine after over 45 hours on the course, to be told you didn’t make it. You berate yourself – did I stop for too long at an aid station? If I hadn’t stopped to walk on that flat section towards the end, would I have made it? If I had run a little bit further, a little bit faster…. The self-recrimination on top of the disappointment of not finishing in time must be unbearable.
There are merits to both sides of the story. After all, we are not celebrating mediocrity – just the opposite. There will always be elite athletes, but putting them aside for the moment, we are celebrating the achievements of ordinary people, like you and me; ordinary people doing extraordinary things. How many people can say they have run 100 miles over Table Mountain, whilst holding down a full time job, looking after a family, and managing to find time for intensive training?
Some may have done it in 20 hours. Some may have done it in 45. At the end of the day, all runners covered the same distance, and that in itself should be recognized and celebrated. In addition, these achievements are deeply personal – only you know what you had to sacrifice to finish the race.
When you have left your heart and soul out on the road or mountain, and given everything you possibly could, the finish time, oddly, becomes irrelevant.
