COMMENT | When finishing well is as good as winning

COMMENT | The Covid-restricted Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have come and gone without much media blitz. Worldwide viewership of its opening and closing ceremonies fell by about 40 percent from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, according to Comcast data analysis.

With every Olympics, though, I recollect the live telecast of Eric Moussambani flailing through his final lap in his solo 100m freestyle heat at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The Equatorial Guinean swimmer, 22 years old then, still holds the slowest record (1 minute 52.72 seconds) in the 100m freestyle - 30 seconds slower than Arnold Gutmann of Hungary at the Athens Olympics in 1896.

Nicknamed ‘Eric the Eel’ by sports journalists, Moussambani entered the Olympics as a wildcard introduced by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to encourage participation by developing countries lacking in professional training facilities.

Moussambani reportedly mastered his strokes at a hotel swimming pool, and a nearby snake-infested lake, only months before the Sydney Olympics.

This unlikely-to-win competitor of grit, an athlete who persists despite the physical pain and mental fog, gives the Olympics a deeper meaning, a meaning far from...