Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Patience (08/21/08)
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TITLE: Olympic Patience | Previous Challenge Entry
By Robert Wright
08/28/08 -
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Job is extolled as the human being best known for his patience. If you peek over his shoulder, my wife is right behind him in line. I’d like to make a case for a group of folks who I believe belong in third place: Olympians. Allow me to expound.
Who works harder in complete anonymity for a very few moments of potential fame? I contend their fame is merely pending due to the fact that a silver or bronze medal might merit a comment or two, but anyone who ranks fourth in the world on down receives barely a nod, for goodness sakes. The Herculean effort these people put forth after years of incredible training regimens is unfathomable. I jog two miles and am toast. If an Olympic swimmer spends one day toiling a short five hours in the pool, she feels guilty. Water polo players tread water, swim furiously from one end of a very large pool to the other, and hurl a ball into a net for two hours in ten feet of water! And please don’t get me started on the marathon runners who basically sprint every one of those 26.2 miles.
These people train relentlessly for four years before anyone pays a bit of attention. Granted, they have regular competitive events around the world in between, but hardly anyone notices until the Olympic flame is lit somewhere on the planet. During the Game of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, 4.4 billion of us (two-thirds of earth’s inhabitants!) instantly became hard-core fans, which produced an additional dynamic that bears witness to the patience of these amazing athletes: not only is every move of the competitors scrutinized by judges who have actually earned the right to determine the quality of a performance, suddenly every person parked in front of a television is an expert on whether a gymnast “stuck the landing”. We cringe if a pair of synchronized divers are out of kilter for the two seconds they twist and flip through the air, and we point and scream when a beach volleyball player scarcely brushes the net. If the Olympians only knew how their performances were dissected by amateurs, the participants would wring some necks, which would clearly not be a pleasant experience if one were to offend the Greco-Roman wrestlers.
The Olympians’ forbearance is tested further as they are constantly hounded to sign autographs, when they have lived most of their young life in relative peace and quiet. Shawn Johnson, U.S. Olympic multiple-medal gymnast from the 2008 Games, told David Letterman that her friends thought she was just a recreational kid who did cartwheels: “Until about last year when I came back from (the) Worlds and they saw me on TV and they were like,’You weren’t joking.’” Though I’m certain that in the beginning it is thrilling to be sought after by adoring fans, after a few days, I can imagine than the majority of these elite athletes much prefer their private, if difficult, training time over the drooling mob.
To further add to the strain, the athletes are housed in the Olympic Village, which is pretty much a glorified college dorm – albeit a very nice one – so I imagine that sleep is neither long nor restful. In a time zone precisely on the other side of the world from the U.S.A., I’m certain that the athletes longed for deep sleep like a rower yearns for the finish line. This final insult to the patience of the Olympic participants would surely be the one that would catapult me forever from the realm of reason.
So now the results are in: Job, Ann, and the Olympians; the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medalists in the epic battle for the title, “World Champion of Patience.”
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Awesome article!
"A" for TOPIC
"A" for sentence structure
"A" for grabbing the reader's attention
"A" for stating your case
"A" for TITLE
A stands for awesome.
Definitely in the top 5.
I'm not one of the judges, though.
May God continue to bless you with such creative and perceptive writing.
Sincerely,
Dan Blankenship