Sport at its best when it transcends the single-minded pursuit of victory
Related Story: The Commonwealth Games is the right event for Australia at the right timeRelated Story: Kurt Fearnley sends powerful message on inclusion after winning silver
"Winning", according to legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi, "isn't everything … it's the only thing."
It is a subject upon which he was uncommonly well placed to comment.
Those uncompromising words are often held up as a benchmark for elite sporting endeavour. A bloody-minded commitment that drives on the best to be better, to accept nothing short of complete excellence.
Such sentiments have come under scrutiny on these shores in the last few weeks.
The single-minded pursuit of victory at all costs drove our cricketers into a murky area of dark arts and moral bankruptcy.
Everyone loves a champion. And the principle facet of athletic competition is to decide a winner. To celebrate the supremacy of the finest in a field of the most able.
And yet sport is, and always has been, about much more than that. If it were not then the experience would be one of function rather than fascination, a binary science with no room for the layers of emotion that make life interesting.
It is something that has been in evidence across the sporting spectrum this week.
As Mick Fanning, an Australian icon, hung up his board at Bells Beach, those carrying him shoulder high across the sand paid no mind to the fact he had just finished second in his farewell event.
Conversely, Masters champion Patrick Reed took the honours but nothing close to the same level of adoration.
Showing nerves of steel and no little talent, Reed outlasted the assault on his lead on the final day of at Augusta, the crowd cheering for the opposite outcome.
Reed's victory earned respect but little love. A divisive figure dogged by allegations of cheating at college, a fans' favourite he is not.
Despite what Nike's last advertising campaign featuring Tiger Woods would have you believe, winning doesn't take care of everything.
Sport, when reduced to merely the measuring of who ran fastest or scored the most points and nothing else beyond that, it seems, renders the entire enterprise something bleak.
Fans and those invested in the games we play seek more than just a definitive decision.
In Europe, too, some of sports' finest were going through the kinds of character-forming experiences that only defeat can offer.
Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola is arguably the finest coach currently working in football. His incredible, and expensively assembled, team were dumped out of the Champions League by a spirited Liverpool side who countered City's elegant dominance with thrilling, counterpunching verve.
City were defeated. But will be crowned English champions by a distance few others have managed later this month.
Success in sport is a complicated, nuanced thing. City will be rightly heralded as exceptional champions in a season in which they have failed in the one arena the club most craves validation.
That is not to say that the art of winning is unimportant. It is always relevant. On occasion Lombardi's mantra holds.
Sport is one of life's true meritocracies, where winners and losers are cast. And the act of winning is the very point.
For evidence of that we need look no further than Sydney's eastern suburbs this weekend, when mighty mare Winx runs in pursuit of a 25th consecutive race win.
The accumulation of victories in themselves define her greatness in isolation.
The Commonwealth Games themselves are instructive of the rich tapestry of sporting glory both in victory and without.
The lopsided medal table — Australia a clear lead over the English, followed by clean air and then the rest — tells the story of who has been doing the winning.
World records have been broken. Australia's dominance an endorphin hit of success for the flag-waving masses.
Each and every medal won has been of individual value. The direct result of hard work and talent.
And yet it is no contradiction to salute those efforts while shrugging slightly at Australian pre-eminence in a multi-sport event in which many events are conspicuous by the absence of its most adept international practitioners.
As Richard Hinds eloquently writes elsewhere on these pages, making an assessment of the Games from the simple metric on a spreadsheet of medals won would be to deny yourself the true pleasures of a surprisingly uplifting Games.
From the joyful scenes of the dancing Malawi netballers, especially after their shock win over New Zealand, will be one of the images of the Games.
They finished seventh in the competition.
Likewise, the sight of three Australian athletes postponing their trip to the ice bath and massage table to applaud home the last-placed athlete from Lesotho in the 10,000m, showered them in a kind of glory to rival any gold medal.
Kurt Fearnley delivered a statesman-like call to a better way of treating each other after the successful decision to include the para-athletes' events alongside those of the able-bodied in these games.
Only those with hearts of stone retained dry eyes that night.
Fearnley had been relegated to a rare second place immediately prior to that moment — an utter irrelevance in the grand scheme of his enduring class.
This is not to say that we should all be holding hands in some sort of sporting safe space, singing Kumbaya, handing out prizes for turning up and not recording losing results to spare the blushes of the losers.
Elite sport is cut throat and much of the drama comes from watching superhumans pushing themselves to limits beyond our own comprehension.
Yet somewhere between the narrow, restrictive idea that winning is all that matters and a woolly minded why-can't-we-just-all-get-along sporting fantasy lies the fertile ground in which excellence is celebrated, but the playing of the game in itself can be enjoyed, too, in all its multi-faceted glory.
"The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have," said Lombardi himself at another, more reflective juncture in his coaching career.
He was right on that one.
And, he could have added, in how we celebrate others who do so. Whether they are first across the line or busting a gut just to finish.
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