Altruism and its Discontents

Last Saturday at the D1 Indoor Meet, Brookline's Robert Gibson eased up in the final 60 meters of the boys 2-mile and let his teammate Mike Burnstein cross the finish line first. It was a generous impulse from a good kid who happens to be the best two-miler in the state as well as the 2007 Mass. cross-country runner of the year.

Gibson and Burnstein had run away from the field, so perhaps they had earned the right to ease up and arrange the finish anyway they liked, giving Burnstein the win and Gibson an easier time recovering for the 4x800 relay, only 45 minutes away.

But it still left me with an odd feeling.

Letting someone else win a race is an odd piece of theater that leaves everyone involved a little bit uncertain about what just happened and what it meant. On the one hand, it seems like good sportsmanship, sharing one's own accomplishments with a deserving teammate. From that perspective, it looks a little bit like a basketball player passing up a layup on a fast break to give his teammate a shot instead. On the other hand, there's an underlying message that makes me feel uneasy: "I could have won, but I chose not to." Is a victory really earned if it is given to you by someone who could have won easily?

In my own racing career, I remember two times when I "let someone win." Both times I remember feeling afterwards that it had been the wrong thing to do. One time, I was just doing a workout at Fresh Pond, and I found myself about to pass a guy near the end of the race. I backed off instead and he won by about 10 meters. I'll always remember how awkward it felt when he came up to me afterwards, beaming because he had "held off my kick." It was agonizing listening to him, knowing that while he had been doing his best, I had been playing around. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and never see him again.

The second time, it was in a race that I had entered under somewhat false pretenses. It was a town race supposed to be for town residents only, and I had talked my way in although I was not a resident. Again, I found myself in a position to win and I backed off at the end, letting a local guy cross the line first. Again, I felt like I had cheapened the event, and I ended up wishing I hadn't entered at all.

These feelings came back to me yesterday while reading a story in the NY Times about the relationship of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, whose "Black Power" salute on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics still stands as one of the most powerful gestures in sports history.

Enduring Image Leads to Enduring Dispute

The story describes the strained relationship between the two men, the resentment over perceived slights and disrespectful things each has written about the other. I was reading along, and then this paragraph about Carlos stopped me dead in my tracks:

"[In his 2001 autobiography] he made an equally spectacular claim, saying that he 'gave' Smith the 200-meter race and the gold medal in 1968. This is a claim he has repeated, and he repeated it again Wednesday. This time, Smith had had enough. 'Gave me?' he said, his voice rising. 'I can’t believe this.'"

One of the things that is great about Track and Field is that the outcome of the contest is not a matter of interpretation. Athletes don't strive to impress judges, or (for the most part) rail against bad calls from referees. It isn't about style points, or intentions, or appearances. In the severe world of a race, the runner who crosses the line first wins. Such a sport demands that if we give anything less than our best, we forfeit the right forever to say that we "could have won."

I wish Gibson and Burnstein all the best on Monday, and whether they are in front or struggling for lower places, I look forward to seeing them race all the way to finish.