The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to postpone the Tokyo Olympics, which were supposed to be held in 2020. The Japanese government, as the host, is forced to accept this bitter pill and accept the fact that the massive renovation of some stadiums and various other sports facilities will not pay off shortly. Although many people have profited from social restrictions and lockdowns, the scale of harm to the sporting field is enormous. Crowd restrictions require that matches go on without spectators, which means that sporting event organizers will not get any income from ticket sales. Lack of competition is not only bad for performance and stamina. The spirit to compete can also fade over time and put an end to the thirst for victory. Like any other fields of life that are forced to face a hard time during pandemic, athletes have to solve a big question. As for the athletes, the question remains: do they still need the audience to watch them when struggling for the achievement?
Nevertheless, the struggle for achievement is not only the
righteousness of athletes. Just like human rights, each man and woman has the
same right to make the most of their efforts to achieve. They have the right to
forge themselves as best as possible by learning the knowledge, developing
their talents, training their physical strength, and working up their skills to
get recognition for what they have done successfully in their specialties. The
smell of success is not only good for their pride; any physical prize (aka
money) will pay off their hard work. Achievement will gain society recognition
for one’s ability and upgrade their reputation in a larger scope of
interaction.
Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and neither does a
victory. It is said that defending a champion title is far more complicated
than striving for it since the beginning, which is so true. A sports team will
definitely fight to their last breath for a victory that has never been
achieved yet, cultivate their skills, learn their opponents’ tactics, try new
strategies, and so on. In the next competition season, the champion can’t avoid
the more challenging situations as the rivals have learned and sneaked their
skills, and losing the title will definitely be something they can’t be proud
of. Anyway, not all champions will choose logical and appropriate ways to
defend their achievements. Some people dare enough to take every option at the
table to maintain their pride, even such options are far from sportsmanship
values and principles.
The Ballad of
Defending Champion
This article (link) explains how the United States of
America managed to acquire its position as the finance world’s sovereign. Many
similar stories and history have also exposed how the superpower nation exerted
to maintain its position. COVID-19 pandemic was taken as a perfect moment to
preserve the domination. First, the US
under Donald Trump blatantly said that COVID-19 is a manufactured virus created
in a biological weapon laboratory in Wuhan, China. WHO once called the
accusation a careless statement made under misleading and groundless shreds of
evidence because Sars Cov-2 is purely nature-engineered. But US ignored the WHO
report and kept standing on its ground. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has
yet to show any sign of lifting the indictment, even though he promised to
execute detrumpfication (removing all policies made during the Trump
administration). On the contrary, Biden has ordered his men to double
their efforts to prove the origin of COVID-19.
Secondly, the US government has admitted that they persuaded
the Brazilian administration not to approve rolling out the Russian
COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V because the United States long to minimize any
influence from non-ally countries in the American continent. From the spoken
time to this very moment until indeterminate time, people of Brazil and the
world need vaccine regardless of developer and the country of its origin. For
Brazil government, people’s safety against COVID-19 is far more important than
helping to safeguard any party’s political hegemony. There is a nightmare of
the past that the US can’t forget concerning a nation’s ideology they see as a
rival. After all, this rejecting to move on behavior does not come in sudden
without cause. Humans are predictable creatures. The current demeanor we see
today is a reflection of what they have been done previously.
The United States is lucky enough to have Britain as its
ally. Their mutualism symbiosis relationship is like two lovers conquering the
space and time boundaries. The devotion came up with an abundance of actions;
one of them was the
expulsion of Chagossians who once lived in Diego Garcia Chagos Island, a
56,13 square kilometers atoll in the Indian Ocean.
Diego Garcia was first occupied in the 18th century when a
group of Africans from Mauritius Island were sent to the atoll as coconut
plantation workers. Along with the end of the slavery era, the Chagossians
gained their freedom and lived happily for generations on the tropical island.
But this did not come to last because, in 1965, the United Kingdom decided to
make the Chagos Archipelago its colony and later expelled 2000 Chagossians from
their homeland in 1967. The British’ did not reckon Chagossians as indigenous
people, so they had no right to houses and land they inherited from their
ancestors for a hundred years. The unrecognition is an excuse because Diego
Garcia was rebuilt as a US military base in the Indian Ocean within a moment.
It launched some bomber jets to destroy Iraq and Afghanistan. John Pilger
filmed the sad story as Stealing a Nation documentary movie. However, some of
us barely heard nor noticed it when it is also tragic, equally with the Gaza
Strip occupation.
Everyone can Win
It is humane to have desire in different shapes and goals,
including the will to win. However, the podium is too small, which makes not
everyone get into it at the same time. Humans must compete against each other
who also yearn to enjoy the victory, which results in winners and losers over
time. On one side, losing could be a valuable experience to measure
self-capability and motivate one not to give up in seeking a path to glory for
another day. Amid economic difficulty, freedom should ease the pain, reminding
us to make the most of it and be something we always want to be, or reaching a
certain degree that we have yet achieved, something better and dignified.
Indeed, a victory could be a hidden trap to grow a
champion’s arrogance and rejecting any sense of justice, neglecting humanity to
fulfill his lust as a forever winner. There are a few people that can take
losing positively as a delayed victory. The sore of falling from high is
certainly hurting for a winner, than someone who always loses constantly.
Instead of facing the truth eagerly, a defending champion does anything to
avoid losing or losing possibility by letting the ego carry away uncontrollable
and self-destructive. Unfortunately, these groups of people are in charge now,
and they rule the world (the United States and its allies) seem not running out
of ideas on how to get rid of the other groups who strive to make a difference
(Russia & China).
Should nations that never taste the glory surrender to their
circumstances and bury their dreams? We can only gain pride with hard work and
discipline. Still, a country is responsible for giving something that we can be
proud of and not feel inferior on the international interaction. Something that
is not only measured by money and spent. (d.swastantika)
