SEPTEMBER 2008 (0
comments)
Family Matters: Olympic Family Week
By Ray M. Wong
Our family has been engrossed in the Summer
Olympic Games in Beijing. My seven-year-old Kevin calls out the
names Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh as if they were his
classmates in first grade. He knows they’ve won 108
straight beach volleyball matches including the gold medal in
the last two Olympics.
My 4-year-old daughter, Kristie, mimics
Michael Phelps’ freestyle stroke while going down her
Little Tikes plastic slide and performs somersaults on the
carpet while watching Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin in
women’s gymnastics.
My wife Quyen has been staying up til
midnight getting her fill of swimming, gymnastics, diving and
track and field. She screamed at the top of her lungs at every
competition Phelps swam, almost willing him to the eight gold
medals he captured in an unprecedented display of swimming
dominance. She held her breath as Shawn Johnson did backflips
on the balance beam to capture gold in her last competition at
Beijing.
And while I admired the speed, strength,
endurance and grace of the above victors and marveled at the
lightning on the track of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, my heart
went out to those who experienced disappointment.
To Alicia Sacramone, who bit her lower lip
to keep herself from breaking into tears after falling off the
balance beam and going out of bounds in the floor exercise to
cost her team a chance at gold in the team competition in
women’s gymnastics. To women’s 100-meter hurdler
Lolo Jones who, ahead at the ninth hurdle, clipped it, lost her
balance and any hope of winning the most important race of her
life. To Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, who couldn’t compete
in the 110-meter men’s hurdles after sustaining an
Achilles’ tendon injury and brought an entire nation to
tears. To Felix Sanchez, so distraught after learning of his
grandmother’s death that he nearly walked off the
starting blocks of the 400-meter hurdles preliminaries and
ended up finishing last in his heat.
To me, it didn’t matter that these
athletes fell short of victory because they showed me that
competition isn’t about gold medals. It’s about
what’s inside -- dealing with adversity and
disappointment and holding your head high even in the midst of
tears. It’s about the spirit of competition and
representing your country to the best of your abilities. And
that says a whole lot more about you than any trinket on a
medal stand.
(include topic in subject line)
North Coast Current: Entire contents Copyright 2008
Reproduction without permission is
prohibited