Primož Roglič was All of Us in Defeat, but Also in Victory
I’ve often heard it observed that professional athletes, and especially great ones, are more interesting in defeat than in victory. The thinking is simple enough: their greatness, while captivating, often renders them inaccessible and impossible to identify with.
Rather than attempt to reconcile their performance with our rigid, mundane understanding of human capability, we do the simpler thing, and reclassify them into another category entirely. We describe them (positively) as freaks, beasts or aliens, and without intending to, absolve ourselves of the difficulty of considering their humanity altogether.
Their failures, on the other hand, bridge the divide and allow us to see a bit of ourselves in them. We wince at the sight of them struggling to endure pain they can’t simply brush aside. We marvel at the strangeness of watching them publicly reckon with realities we imagine ourselves to be much more familiar with: the agony of impossibility, and the paralyzing horror of inadequacy.
Study sporting fandom long enough, and you’ll invariably arrive at the conclusion that watching sports isn’t really about witnessing the spectacular. The true gift athletes give us is something much more ordinary, and yet much more profound: they allow us to feel things.
