GLOBE EDITORIAL
Paul Hamm's examplePAUL HAMM'S fall and rise are what make the Olympics so much more than a sports event. The US gymnast who spun despair into gold on Wednesday gives hope to the whole human endeavor by defusing the word "loser."
He was, by most calculations, out of contention after a disastrous dismount from the vault sent him stumbling into the judges' table. The outstretched hands halting his momentum would record his dissappointing score -- a 9.137 that dropped him from first place to 12th in the all-around men's gymnastic competition. He had two more events to go -- the parallel bars and the high bar. But his routines needed to be just about perfect to recoup the lost points, and getting the mind and spirit refocused after such a humiliating blunder can be almost impossible. Yet there he was -- tears blinked back, hands sure, body seeming to transcend gravity as he gave two of the most stunning performances in his career, earning consecutive scores of 9.837. And in executing a complex dismount, his feet held to the mat like magnets on metal, without so much as a wobble. He won the gold medal by 12-thousandths of a point, edging out South Korea's Kim Dae Eun. "I dug down deep and I fought for everything," Hamm said. How easy it would have been instead for Hamm to stay mentally slumped against the stadium wall, where he had sat after the vault, replaying what could have been and should have been. Haven't we all done that? When the Sunday afternoon tennis match starts to go sour on a wild backhand, a person can be consumed by the points just lost instead of the one about to be played. The past too easily becomes prologue for a person afraid to make a career move because of missing out on previous promotions or still smarting from having made a bad business decision. The romantic arena can be loaded with awkward stumbles and miscalculations that might keep a person single if he or she were to dwell on the negatives of bad dates instead of the possibilities of love. Hardship, loss, pain, and embarrassment are not necessarily the thieves they seem to be if a person can learn from them and grow stronger. At the heart of this life exercise is the ability to know oneself and to let neither inflated expectations nor disappointment obscure that connection to the core. "I did the best I could possibly do," said Hamm's teammate Brett McClure, who came in ninth. "I go out of here with absolutely no regrets."
Whether champion, also-ran, or flabby-armed average Joe or Jane, that attitude always makes a person a winner. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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