Olympics: Sportsmanship lives again

As participating spectators of the sports world here in the United States, we often get a jaded view of it.

More often than not, it is justified.

We are subjected to the protests of multi-millionaire professional athletes when a game or play or on-field dispute is not settled to their satisfaction.

Manifested from everything from brawls on the court, field or ice, to shoving or spitting on umpires, to threatening referees outside of the arena or actually throwing bats and balls at umpires, sadly this is accepted as a norm and as "part of the game."

We are always told that sports reflect its society's culture, but wouldn't it be terrific if the reverse were true?

Well, half way through the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, sports have reached that realm with its athletes rising above the fray, showing spectators that their performances are outside of the "cultural norm."

For the USA Olympic athletes competing in these games, it clearly is not about how many Olympic medals have been won, but how they have been won.

There are many stories of struggle and travails of many of these athletes representing the USA, including many who are in their third Olympics games even after prior Olympics victories.

Another chance to win, prior disappointments, surgeries from injuries, personal sacrifice and determination all contribute to the reasons a great many are drawn back to the Games.

The way in which these Olympians handle the victories as well their defeats will greatly impact their abilities to forge ahead to the next championship and for many another bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Unlike "professional" athletes, almost all of the athletes of the Games must rely on sponsorship to continue to train and be able to afford to travel.

Only the elite few who have proven themselves for many years have become millionaires through corporate sponsorship, however they have no guaranteed contracts.

They are only as good as their last race, only one injury away from retirement, or a year or two away from having to retire because of age.

We have seen many, many inspirational stories of USA Olympians thus far in these Games, and Michael Phelps' name is always at the top of the list.

He has been the talk of these games for months now, and his first chapter of fame has only begun to unfold.

He has been praised for his physical potential, for many say that at the age of 19 he has yet to reach it in spite of his current greatness.

He has appeared on magazine covers and on television commercials for so long now, it feels like we have known him for years.

Yet many also predicted he would implode at these games because of the physical demands of swimming 18 times in order to win 8 medals on top of the pressure of winning seven gold medals to tie Mark Spitz' record.

The Mark Spitz comparison to 1972 became more of an annoyance than an entertaining possibility.

Experts also noted that given the swimming competition of this era, there is no way Spitz would have ever won seven gold medals today.

Fabulously, Phelps won six gold medals and two bronze medals and historically won the most medals ever by an individual in a non-boycotted Olympics Games.

However, the number of medals Phelps won hardly tells the whole story.

In one of the races in which Phelps won bronze, the 200m freestyle, he realized he had only an outside chance to even win a medal.

He so desired to swim against the world's best in that particular race, dominated and won by Australia's Ian Thorpe, that he sacrificed the additional physical preparedness necessary for the race.

By doing that, it could have had a possible negative impact on his other races, as well as the possibility of not even getting a medal in the 200m, risking what the media would interpret as a failure in not being able to win a total of eight medals.

After he swam in the 4x100m freestyle medley relay, Phelps gave up his spot in the final to teammate, Ian Crocker, his main competition in the 100m butterfly, in which Phelps won gold and set a world record.

However, Crocker was part of the men's 4x100 freestyle relay team which disappointingly finished third with the bronze medal.

The USA team had historically always dominated that race, but Crocker had the slowest individual time, and later we learned that he was ill when he was racing.

Maybe the USA Swim Team should have replaced him, but Phelps gave him a chance for redemption by giving up his spot to Crocker.

The race was won by the USA in world record time, and both Crocker and Phelps will earn the gold.

More importantly, it showed Phelps exemplified sportsmanship, grace and heart by trying to bring more attention to the sport of swimming than to himself.

Phelps wound up swimming a total 17 races, more than any swimmer in the entirety of these Olympic Games.

He came in first in 13 of them, broke nine records (combined world, Olympic and American records) and won the most medals historically in any one non-boycotted Olympics games since 1896.

In spite of all of his glory, Phelps has handled his new found notoriety with humbleness, pride and dignity.

We never heard a complaint from him about fatigue, difficulty of the tasks ahead of him, nor fear of failure.

Fortunately for us, his is only one of the tremendous stories and victories being celebrated at these Olympic Games.

As the 2004 Olympic Games reach their close at the end of this week, most of these athletes will be forgotten until four years from now.

Unfortunately, that is sad for sports in general, as the Olympic Games so often bring out the best in human nature and for a little while we have been able to believe again that our society will once again exemplify our Olympic athletes.

During this time we have been able to put aside hearing about the usual contract disputes, player selfishness, locker room trash talk and off the field troubles of so many of our professional athletes, which are "the mirror image" of our society.

Athletic performance and grace under fire need to be celebrated far more than once every four years.

These 2004 Summer Olympic Games, for two weeks, remind us that we have reason to dream and be hopeful again.