‘The tumult and the shouting dies The Captains and the Kings depart …’
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)
So will the glorious, heart-warming success inspire a generation? And if so which generation? One abiding lesson from watching numerous interviews with those who did and did not win medals is that these people are Not Like Us. Laura Trott talking about the taste of lactic acid in her mouth, or Alistair Brownlee dismissing his brother’s near-collapse at the end of the triathlon are startling examples, but it’s true for all of them. Their willingness to suffer voluntarily and devote whole chunks of their lives to such goals sets them apart. Then we pay them and that makes them even more different. As my friend said, who attended the Barcelona Olympics of 1992, where the high point was watching Linford Christie win the 100 metres gold medal, we should look on them as modern day gladiators whom we pay to compete for us. We need heroes, and it is entirely justifiable that we should pay to enable them to fulfil their desires, but as a model for the rest of us it’s as distant as flying to the moon. The rest of us need to participate in exercise that is fun, sociable, cheap, and for many of us profoundly non-competitive.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2012