For a long time now, the Olympics have been more than a simple sporting event for me. Starting in 1992, Yvonne and I have loved watching the Olympics together. It's been one of the things that we can enjoy equally as a couple, and we've spent hundreds of hours over the past two decades enjoying the Games' unique mix of competition, human and cultural interest. If I had no other reason than that to love the Olympics, that would be enough.
But I've also benefitted from the Games. They've changed the kind of person I was — none more so than the 1996 Atlanta Games. In what has become one of my most often-repeated stories (probably to the point of being tiresome), when the opening ceremonies of those games began, I was a smoker. By the time the closing ceremonies ended, I was not.
In between those two events, the enormous amount of persistence and hard work those athletes had slowly began to dawn on me. I was inspired by the qualities that each and every one of them had in order to be able to put on their country's uniform. Somewhere inside of me, I saw tiny glimmers of some of those same qualities in myself. And fueled by inspiration, popsicles and lots of hot baths, I managed to do what I had tried to do for a solid year prior than that, and dreamed about for years before that — put aside for good and all an expensive, deadly and horrifically addictive habit. Sixteen years later, it remains among my proudest accomplishments.
Flash forward four olympiads. Somewhere, amid the many, many commercial breaks of the London Games, NBC aired a commercial from Nike. Called "Find Your Greatness," it showed a distant runner slowly getting closer as he trudges resolutely down a rural backroad. As he gets closer to the camera, we realize he is a young boy, five-feet, three-inches tall, and weighing (I am told), 200 pounds — roughly the same weight I pack into a five-foot eight-inch frame.
As he slowly draws near, actor Tom Hardy delivers the following narration:
"Greatness – it’s just something we made up. Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift reserved for a chosen few. For prodigies. For superstars. And the rest of us can only stand by watching. You can forget that. Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It’s not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We’re all capable of it. All of us."
I'm normally not one to be taken in by advertising, but it may have been my favorite moment of the entire games. And it came from an entity that, at the end of the day, was trying to sell shoes.
There have been an untold number of sports gear advertisements (some of them from Nike) that have shown us lean, fit athletes of both genders, powering through workouts, grimacing as they flex their well-honed muscles while running through training regimens worthy of an Olympic sprinter. The easy implication is that all we have to do to become like them is buy their product, and we, too, will one day be like that.
And while I'd love to have three percent body fat and be able to run up a set of NFL stadium steps like it's a walk to the car, that's not me. The me that is, right now, is at least 50 pounds overweight, I have a bad back, and my best time on the mile was probably 28 years ago, when I think I averaged around 12 minutes. I have never, and probably will never, look like a professional athlete. So when those kinds of commercials come on, I don't even see them.
But the fat kid shuffling slowly along an endless dirt road? That kid I know. He doesn't know how high the mountain he's trying to climb is; only that he's at the bottom of it. A lot of people in his situation would say "to heck with it, exercising is not for me, I'm no good at it, this is what I am." He's obviously not listening to those voices. He's listening to the one that says "get moving." He doesn't have the body of an athlete, but there's one inside him, trying to get out. Most commercials for athletic gear show the end of the journey; this one shows the awkward, painful beginning. At the moment, this is the best he can do. But at least he's doing it. And that's what makes him great.
The sixteen days of the Olympic Games show us people who have reached the pinnacle — all of them are among the best at their sport in their respective countries. During the course of the Games, some of them find out (or are reminded) that they are among the best in the world. As victories go, it doesn't get any bigger.
The Nike "Find Your Greatness" ads celebrate the little victories — the kind that all of us have within our grasp. It challenges the notion that exercise and athletics are something that only a chosen few can do. "It's not about lowering expectations; it's about raising them for every last one of us," one ad reads. It takes the focus off of champions, and puts it on everyone. Everyone — all of us — can achieve personal bests. Only a tiny fraction of us can be Olympians. But the inner drive they have to push themselves — higher, faster, stronger, as Olympic motto says — is open to all of us.
Nike is a business. They are trying to sell shoes. But the ads they bought during the Olympic Games have taken their famous "Just Do It" slogan to the next level. You don't have to buy their shoes to get something out of it. And maybe, just maybe, more of us will start exercising because of it.
Before the Olympics, I managed maybe two or three miles a week. I have a strong tendency towards lazy, so even that was hit or miss. But in the week after Olympics, I set three records of my own — most workouts in a week (five so far, which I hope to stretch to six by the end of the day); fastest mile (16' 57") and longest walk (2.3 miles).
Granted, I'm burning brightly this week, fueled by the reflected glow of the Olympic Flame. And as time passes, enthusiasm fades, and motivation crumbles. I could well be back to my old habits in a month. But this time, I'm hoping that won't be the case. I'm hoping that four years from now, at the start of the 2016 Rio Games, I will be able to look back at the last four years, and grin at what I've done since London.
We'll see. If I fail, and fall back to my old habits, then as the Japanese (and my nephews) say, "fall down seven times, stand up eight." All I can do is keep trying, and keep trying, and keep trying. In the words of the Olympic Creed:
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Here's to the coming fight.
