Why the 2026 Olympics remind us there are no real losers

By Mike Aleman | FāVS News Columnist

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.

Throughout the 2026 Olympics, valiant, courageous and just plain gutsy men and women competed for Olympic gold, silver and bronze. Three in each event claimed prizes, totaling 349 acknowledged winners. The remaining 2,551 athletes, though not medalists, were winners in their own right.

There were no losers. All achieved a high level of accomplishment by making their respective teams, by offering the best of themselves.

There’s an old story that tells of Adam, Eve, and friends in heaven before coming to earth. Playing one sport or another and growing bored, they went to God and asked, “Can we start keeping score?”

“No score keeping. It’s how you play the game that counts.” He gave that phrase centuries later to Grantland Rice, known as the “Dean of American Sports Writers,” who famously wrote that it was not important whether you “won or lost, but how you played the game.”

But Adam and his teammates insisted. “What would we have to do to be able to keep score?”

“You’d have to leave the garden and go to Earth. But if you do so, half will become unhappy, because the concept of losing will enter your realm forevermore,” God said. “The term ‘loser’ will extend beyond your games and become a stigma. Bullies will use it against those who don’t win.”

But they insisted. So God sent them to Earth, and you know the rest.

Loss is a momentous occasion in life. Everyone loses someone, unless they die before that happens. We lose jobs through no fault of our own. We lose our health. We lose promising opportunities to grow, to gain, to advance.

Such loss does not make us losers. It makes us people who have suffered loss.

In my tradition, it’s fighting the good fight and finishing the race that matters — keeping faith through Alzheimer’s, through cancer, through losing a limb. It’s losing an election gracefully.

Loss is a great equalizer, allowing our human compassion to rise up and be offered to someone in need. Denigrating others for suffering loss is cruel. It adds salt to an already painful wound.

Our current political moment seems to reward the opposite impulse — the mockery of those who don’t finish first, the refusal to extend grace to those who fall short. That’s worth naming, whatever your politics.

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience are words to live by, from the lowest to the highest.

My faith teaches that all people are dearly loved — and that no medal, title or trophy can match what it means to be fully human in that love. No human glory can make you a winner in any ultimate sense, and no human disparagement can make you a loser.

So fight the good fight. Finish the race.

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