Margin Call...

John F. Kennedy once wrote, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." As the XXXIII Olympiad ended in Paris, France last night, hundreds of athletes won medals of different alloys while many, many more went home with nothing than the right to say they were Olympians, if for only once. The difference between those two extremes lie in the margins: some afforded them and others gained through guile and experience.

For some, they ran through walls with no time left and found victory on the other side...

For some, they held victory in their steely grasp only to let is slip away in the end...

For these two it came down to 1/100th of a second shredding through waves...

And for these two it was 2/100ths of a second scampering over vertical resin holds...

For another duo it was the 1/100th of a second lean of a sternum on the last step of 800 meters...

And the first torso crossing the line 5/100ths of a second in a blur lasting less than 10...

For one athlete, summoning that which maybe he didn't know he had...

For one, it was the margin of the ball of her foot that seperated her from possible gold...

And for another, it was an extended glove that saved a team and defeated another...

Yet still others felt the sting on a last gasp heave into a guarded net, treading water...

The thinnest of margins from a group of dedicated, hard workers who live on the margins. Some with little to no support or funding, and others with exorbitant resources to choose from. Scores, judges cards, times, goals...they  are the margins athletes live and die on. 

This summer's Olympics proved again just how important training needs to be. Specific, representative of the sport and competition being contested with added pressure. Anything less than that and those athletes above that won could have been on the underside of the margin of victory. 

Orphans and a thousand fathers roam Paris today, some perhaps waiting to come to Los Angeles in 2028. They know the margin call will be thin, as always...