Wasps
Do you remember Pieter van den Hoogenband from the Sydney Olympics in 2000? He won Gold in the 100m freestyle with a time of 47.84 seconds. You’d have to be a top class quizzer or a swimming fan to know that.
But if i ask you if you remember Eric “the Eel” Moussambani, I bet you remember him. Three months before the Games he answered an advert for swimmers to try out for the national team, which had been given a wild card entry. Two people turned up – Eric and a lady called Paula Barila Bolopa. They were both selected. With little preparation time, no coaches and, more importantly, no Olympic size swimming pool, they started to train. Eric asked someone at a hotel to coach him, and was able to use the hotel’s swimming pool between 5 and 6 am. It was a 12 meter pool. The rest of his swimming was done in a river (sharing it with crocodiles) and in the sea, where local fishermen gave him coaching input. They didn’t see an Olympic size pool until they arrived at the games.
Painted Lady
He came last on the day, in swimming kit given to him by a South African coach, and he needed oxygen after finishing, but the Australian crowd cheered him on, even when he thought of giving up. The crowd turned out to cheer Paula on too, a few days later. Both swimmers recorded the worst Olympic times ever in this event. But they both tried and they are both Olympians, which is more than I am.
Eric Moussambani did improve, though he never troubled the upper reaches of the sport, and he eventually became National Coach of Equatorial Guinea, a country which now has two Olympic size pools.
In subsequent news reports he was compared to Eddie the Eagle Edwards, another famous Olympic loser. Eddie the Eagle had a rule named after him as the sport tried to keep him out. But it didn’t really matter. As with Eric the Eel – who remembers the winners.?
I think it’s a Roesel’s bush-cricket
Pingback: Glorious Losers and a Glorious Winner | quercuscommunity
Pingback: Good News Stories | quercuscommunity
Very well said, Simon. The Olympics should be about taking part and representing one’s country; winning is an added extra.
Yes that is a Roesel’s bush-cricket.
The magic of WP – where else could I find someone who is an expert on church architecture, Suffolk and bush crickets all combined in one person. 🙂
You’re very kind, Simon but I’m hardly an expert on anything!
Well, I don’t know anyone who knows more about the subjects than you do, so I rest my case. 🙂
😀 Thank you.
🙂
Amazing stories regarding all three of them. Kudos to anyone who makes it that far!
Yes. It takes great mental fortitude to achieve championship status, but how much more does it take to persist when you are so far off the pace?
The desire to have been there and done it no matter what. Something like that is probably a once in a lifetime experience.
Yes, it must be a great thing. I should, with hindsight, have pushed the kids into volunteering for the 2012 games in London – just to be a part of the volunteer staff seems to have been a great experience.
This is salutary for those only interested in gold
It’s rather like the slave who accompanied a victorious general in a Roman Triumphal procession and whispered in his ear to remind him that he was mortal and all glory passes. All Olympic Champions should be given a medal, a poster of Paris and a picture of Eric the Eel.
What bugs me is the repetition of , ‘It just shows that dreams can come true’ or ‘it just what you can do if you never give up’. That only applies to the winners. All the losers had dreams too and they never gave up but somehow or other, they didn’t win.
But they did do a lot of good stuff along the way and are probably better people because of it.
Thank you. This is a most important post.
Thank you for reading it. I often find the losers are more interesting than the winners.
What a story! It’s amazing Eric got there at all.
All he needed to do was say yes and the rest seems to have happened. No costume, no coaching, never seen a full size pool, didn’t even know how to enter the water until he watched other swimmers. And he still went ahead and compted. I would have runaway . . .