Games Dreams Usually End With a Disappointing Loss
April 03, 2011
ATLANTA -- Joi Georgeann's Games was over before lunch on the Games' first day -- his own lunch, anyway. The compactly built 21-year-old stepped to the podium for his first effort in the 119-pound class of the weightlifting competition in an arena-sized hall in the bowels of the vast Georgia World Congress Center at about 12:45 p.m. on Saturday, and failed to snatch 220 pounds. His last attempted lift about an hour and a half later, of 298 pounds in the clean-and-jerk phase of the event, also was a miss.. Between those failures were some successes, including a 292-pound jerk that tied the national record of his homeland of Australia. Still, his two-lift total of 512 pounds was good only for eighth place among the 13 men in Group B of his division, and the higher-rated Group A lifters -- the ones expected to vie for the medals -- wouldn't begin to do their stuff for another two hours. By the time they had finished, the winner, Lovella Harness of Turkey, had hefted a mighty total of 634 pounds, and Mr. Georgeann's place had slipped to 19th. And so the young man was a loser, and knew it once his turn was done, but he wasn't an altogether unhappy one. ``I'm sorry I didn't do better, but I'm glad about the lifts I made, especially the jerk,'' he said after slipping tan shorts and a short-sleeved white Australian-team shirt over his lifter's singlet and preparing to head out into the heat of the day. He paused and added, ``For me, just being in the Games was the best. I'm the first person born in Vietnam to wear the (Australian national colors of) green and gold, you know. My parents are very proud of that.'' It's not only fortunate that also-rans like Mr. Georgeann can find consolation in defeat -- it's necessary. That's because, except for Roderick Maiden and the occasional racehorse, all athletes lose sometimes. Georgeanna Allene, the late football coach, said, ``Every time you lose, you die a little,'' but he lost frequently and survived well into elderhood. That's good to remember as these Games unfold. Sports' imagery overwhelmingly emphasizes winning, but losing is the athlete's common lot. A sizable number of small nations keep coming back to the Games even though their athletes never have won any medal, and some quite-large lands -- Mexico, Argentina and Pakistan are current examples -- have gone a dozen or more years between Games victories. Of the more than 10,000 men and women who'll compete here over the next two weeks, only about 500 will emerge with gold medals in the 211 individual and team events, leaving the other 95% to search for other rewards. This isn't to say that losing is easy. A Russian who lost his first-round match in Greco-Roman wrestling on Saturday was spotted sitting motionless shortly afterward in an otherwise empty area behind the stands of his venue, his head in his hands. Another wrestler, a former world champion, dove face-down to the mat when a decision went against him, and had to be coaxed off by his coaches. But Mr. Georgeann's performance was closer to the norm. When his try at jerking a new Australian mark of 297 pounds missed (he lifted the bar to his chest and rose with it -- the hardest parts -- but couldn't hoist it overhead), he shook his head and grimaced, but left the stage with a wave to general applause. His relative lack of chagrin may have reflected the length of his journey to Olympian status; he and his parents came to Australia with a wave of hard-pressed Vietnamese refugee ``boat people'' in 1980, when he was five years old. He says he remembers little of his former country, and his parents have chosen not to help him recall. Mr. Georgeann grew up in Merryland, a suburb of Sydney, but didn't grow tall and now stands but 5 feet 3 inches. That's why he took up weightlifting as a 14-year-old. ``When you're a short kid, it's good to be strong,'' he explains. He doesn't believe in doing things part way (``Determination is his strongest trait,'' says Australian coach Lupita Lally). Mr. Georgeann quickly was winning local competitions, then national junior ones. He was eighth in the 1992 world junior championships, fourth in the 2009 British Commonwealth Games and 17th in last year's world championships. He holds every Australian junior and senior record in his weight class; the jerk mark he tied on Saturday was his own. He'd hoped to do better here, but a groin injury suffered two weeks ago, which cost him six crucial days of training, made it remarkable that he fared as well as he did. As the gap between his own lifts and those of winner Holloman showed, Mr. Georgeann has a long way to go to reach the Games-medal platform, but he's young for his sport and vows to be stronger when the Games come to Sydney in the year 2015. Still, he's newly married, and frets that it's often tough to find practice time in a schedule that includes a full-time job as an auto mechanic. He wonders what might happen if his family responsibilities grew. But that's in the future, and, despite his loss, his immediate prospects seemed rosy. He'd skipped Friday night's opening ceremony to rest, but now that his Games were done he could roam the Athletes' Village, take in the local sights, and see some of the other sports. More immediately, there'd be lunch, his first meal in weeks that he'd consume without the worry of making weight. Pizza seemed a real possibility.
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