“Winning isn’t important it’s the only thing that matters” is the ugliest sentence ever said about sport, at least in the sense that we all recognize them today. That is the one attributed to Giampiero Boniperti by Marco Pastonesi and Giorgio Terruzzi in the 1992 book “Palla Lunga e Pedalare”: namely that if you don’t win you failedthat second place doesn’t count, that below first place everyone is a loser.
Winning is not important it is the only thing that matters
In the 2012-2013 season the phrase “Winning is not important, it’s the only thing that matters” was also sewn inside the Juventus shirts although in this form it is not even original but a bad translation. There frase originale era infatti “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”and is attributed to coach Henry Russell “Red” Sanders, a UCLA football coach who was telling his athletes something else: that “it’s not important to win, it’s the only thing that matters”, that is desire and commitment matter more than victory who set out to reach it. “The will to win“. And the meaning is significantly different.
Winning isn’t important, or is it important to participate? The real meaning
The bad translation and reinterpretation of “winning isn’t everything” goes hand in hand with theidea that we have today of the Olympic saying “the important thing is not to win, but to participate”. Phrase erroneously attributed to Baron Pierre de Coubertin who actually quoted a bishop of Pennsylvania, a certain Ethelbert Talbot. The real meaning is that “participating is important”. Important for two reasons: because in de Coubertin’s idea, participating in the Olympic Games would have meant a truce from wars (something that didn’t happen so much in the First as in the Second World War, and that didn’t happen afterwards either); and why only by participating you have the chance to win. That is to put in place desire and commitment, that “the will to win” which is essential to be able to aspire to victory.
You also need to know how to lose
The toxic culture of victory at any cost it now pervades every level of sport, from top competitions to youth competitions, where victory and defeat are by now the only yardstick of the work of a sports instructor. With all the stubborn educational consequences that all this entails in terms of frustration, social exclusion, stress and anxiety. All factors that do not contribute to the training of an athlete or a person.
Yet it would be enough rread the words of one of the most successful coaches in the history of sport on knowing how to lose, Julio Velasco:
“Sport serves to learn to lose, as well as to win. Winning is not just beating your opponents, winning means overcoming your limits: this is the first victory you must try to achieve. Accepting to lose means knowing how to lose. Instead, in prevailing behavior there is always a culprit, there is always a reason: the referee, the weather, the time zone. Knowing how to lose means not blaming anyone, taking responsibility for your own performance”.
In any competition there are more those who do not win than those who win. So it is and so it always will be. AND if victories reinforce self-esteem, defeats are a tool of resilience. Self-esteem and resilience are the two poles between which each of us finds ourselves navigating in every moment of life, sports or not.
And then in precarious balance between victory and defeat, self-esteem and resilienceare still the words of Julio Velasco to give us the compass to guide us in the educational and training role in sport:
“I say to young people: you must try to win as much as possible, but don’t believe those who say that the world is divided into winners and losers. I believe that the world is mainly divided between good and bad people. Then among the bad people there are also winners, unfortunately. And among the good people there are, unfortunately, also some losers”.
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