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Winning by knowing you can lose By Jerrold Kessel Tags: Biejing Olympics, Israel  Maybe we don't know how to win. But what's more worrying is we don't know how to lose. I wanted Arik Zeevi to get his medal as much as anyone. Even more so - I had staked my reputation on it. But, the judoka was never so much a model for Israeli sports dreams as in defeat - even more than when he brought glory to Israel by winning a medal in Athens. A true sportsman, he said, "the Dutch guy who beat me deserved a medal, I didn't." A stark contrast to most of our sports commentators who only wanted to damn "another disappointment" in the Beijing Olympics. "You win some, you lose some" is a philosophy to which some non-competitive sportspeople ascribe. That mindset isn't that helpful for the athlete himself, or herself. Athletes need, as Michael Phelps said, "to believe that nothing is impossible," that "if you want something badly enough, you can always achieve it" - even if they can't. But this is the right attitude for the rest of us who are supposed to be supporting our champions, win or lose - not destroying them when they don't manage to beat Phelps or an able Dutch judoka. The national ethos seems to dictate that we feel we can never afford to lose. So, it's hardly strange that so much of our TV coverage of the first week of the Games focused on judo. After all, this is the sport that has reaped us medals. However, it also offers the opportunity for instant gratification and for instant despair, in a result perceived as disaster. Advertisement Always striving to win is a noble aspiration. But sport is not starkly black and white. Sport is a complex human activity - a competitive process full of contours and subtleties. When our sportspeople come out second-best, however, they always "lose" - they are never "defeated by." Developing a sports culture requires the determination to win, but also the dignity to appreciate the possibility of being beaten by a superior opponent. The famed novelist Saul Bellow once observed that Israelis want to be able to parade "the best in the world" in every single field of endeavor. Ambition is a laudable thing, but it may also be unrealistic. In some circumstances, it can be perilous. The line between assertiveness and arrogance - between "I'm determined to win" and "I'm sure to win," irrespective of the competition - is awfully thin. Walking that line can be the key to sporting success. The Bellow dictum is fine, if feasible. But how many small nations win more than one medal? Rather than decrying "another failure" and "medals down the drain," shouldn't we be awfully proud when an Israeli shooter or swimmer places 12th in the world - the 12th best of more than six billion? We shouldn't have needed Eurosport commentator Drew Gordon to herald the efforts of Israel's swimmers, each one of whom bar one bested national records. We should have been singing their praises ourselves. Of course, we can always follow the example of Qatar or Turkey or Holland and import some champions. Perhaps, we need to bring home not only the Falashmura but thousands more Ethiopians - there are bound to be several long-distance champion runners among them who are capable of winning a crop of Olympic medals. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Poor sports Here are the top 10 excuses for Israel's poor Olympics showing. Kafka the Zionist Remnants of Kafka's estate found in T.A. raise questions of his belief in Zionism.

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