I’ve written about this before. Probably said the same things. It just comes back to me from time to time. Seems worth mulling over. I suppose I could just find the old remarks and bump em. But this’ll do for now.
It’s a mysterious thing, racing is. It’s organized and we can slot into it to see how we do and this can be a fascinating thing. But there are aspects to it that perhaps we don’t always fully consider. Indeed, it’s a prime situation for invoking an endless chase syndrome, where there is no end-point, no real finish.
Consider how racing is actually organized. If we do races and eventually start winning, what happens? We’re encouraged to take the next step up in difficulty. Sometimes we’re forced. Then we lose again. Unless we commit even more time, money and effort and we chance to start winning again. Then? We’re bumped up again to where … we lose. The end-point is either world champion or a place where we lose.
If you’re happy at the entry level and enjoy doing a sport now’n’then and just happen to be good at it at that casual level and then get the curse of winning and refuse to “move up” you’ll be actually cursed by your pals as a “sandbagger” — one who’s too good to be where they are.
Nobody likes to see the same people win over and over. But that’s how it goes. And it is a major source for the drama of sport. A certain local person is known as being the best. But then someone new comes along and … maybe … what’ll happen? There might be a new king or queen! Who in turn is resented if they don’t move up and start losing.
I suppose folks get the sandbagger label even more if they start using the tools of the elites while persisting in the beginner ranks. But nowadays that’s not so surprising to see: the tools of the pro are often common at the beginner level.
Still, people want others to compete “at their ability” which means: where they mostly lose, like everyone else.
A regional pro might not seem to be resented, but I think it happens even to them: other local pro’s grumble and wish the dominant rider would just move up to a national team. Heck, if a national pro wins everywhere around their nation but doesn’t join the biggest show of all they get sniped at as well. “He’s afraid of the world stage. He doesn’t dare go to Europe.”
I suppose at a Masters level, once someone is old they might just be accepted as the local best old athlete and they are allowed to gracefully be the regular local winner. They obviously have at least a job and can’t be expected to give it all up for the sport anymore and to travel away to find a level of sport where they’d begin to lose again.
Maybe being part of a cadre of top sportsfolk is tolerable if none of them win too much. If there’s some drama as to which of the 5 or so might be “on” that day no one will call any of them a sandbagger.
The mask of competition is infamous for being apparent only to those who regularly lose or win. The middling competitors are far more likely to perversely savor the carrot that dangles in front of them forever. Constant winners get the carrot only to have it jerked away to be replace by another carrot, one that you could say is both bigger and smaller — more rewarding yet more difficult. Ever fewer can access it because it’s less and less suitable for normal people. Perhaps? To get it one has to become ever more a bike racer, ever more shaped to the bicycle, and ever less a regular person. The winner realizes that the carrot is always taken away. The midpackers think they’re getting closer. Those “off the back” never bother to activate their hopes in that direction — they might give it a shot then see there’s no point.
In short, if we’re not careful we can find ourselves easily exploited. But the real risk is that we exploit ourselves. An unexamined motive ends up driving our behavior. Its hidden aspect turns it into a boundless source of drive. A carrot that stays beyond our reach. And it’s our own doing yet we don’t know what we do.
Something like that, anyway.
Sometimes I think I see through competition and decide that competing against others isn’t so nice but that I merely want to set my own bar and see how I do, to compete against myself. If we reflect on this a bit, it might end up being even worse than competing against others. I don’t claim to have it sorted out. I only mean to throw a caution flag on the play.
One way out of the trap might be to treat sport and games as more an occasion for performance, a show, a presentation. Possibly if we make it more our own somehow, we can do the sport rather than have it do us. We live it rather than it live thru us, as if we were just a zombie medium.
Zombies are popular today because they mean something. They scare us for a reason. …A reason beyond their rotting flesh we see in movies. It’s easy for alien forces to live through us. And for us to not really be alive to ourselves. For ourselves. It’s tricky! It’s a risk! Don’t get bitten!
Where does a winner get his motivation then, if the carrot is made to endlessly recede ahead of him despite victories? He sees that it’s not about the carrot. It’s about the image of the action. The action itself has no merit. Why is the image valued then? Because it can help to sell something: the sport or some product. The winner becomes a pro or spokesperson, a product rep or an event rep. He becomes an employee along with the organizer and everyone else involved. Together they’re putting on a show, for advertisers, for sponsors, for the public, for the future of the sport. Winner is just a job. Every race has one.
Is that cynical?
I suppose a sport can have merit and not be cynical if it uses its image as a bully pulpit to honor and promote something truly worthy. Maybe everyone looks to the winner then the winner says “I’m just a bike racer. The real hero is the rider who helps their city thrive by biking for errands and waving to their neighbors and shows other people how to ride and how to take care of their bikes.” Maybe the hope is in that kind of thing.
