Remythequill … The Winner Takes It All

Yes, that is a reference to the Abba song. It’s not their best, not by a long shot. Personally, ‘Mamma Mia’, ‘DoesYour Mother Know’ and ‘Gimme, Gimme Gimme!’ are better. (Don’t @ me!) But the song carries a particular grain of truth: The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall.

Just ask Mohammed Salah. Yes, I went there.

Whenever popular sporting spectacles like the Champions League or the NBA Finals or the Olympic Games come to an end, I am always intrigued by the losing side, the person who trails everyone else in the eighth lane, forgotten by the crowd and, seemingly, the camera man as well.

Reporters rush to the winners, asking them what it feels like to be a champion, how hard they worked, how long they nurtured the dream, if they ever doubted themselves and what advice they have for the next breed. If you watch enough sports interviews, all the questions become the same.

For the losers, there are those panning, slow-motion shots of them crying when the reality of defeat finally sinks in, coaches consoling their athletes. Sometimes it is emotional, but most of the time people just glaze over it all.

We like winners because it means we do not have to deal with losers. Losers will tell us things about ourselves that we do not want to know.

Like how we also trained as hard as the winners; how we woke up every day to do the squats and run miles beyond endurance; how the winner, for all their perceived brilliance, really won from one lucky moment; how much we envy the winner, or how much we do not really wish them all the best.

Sometimes, when you lose, you just want the whole world to be swallowed in a fireball, to be reset back to factory settings – it is the only justice when you are staring into defeat.

The world writes stories about winners but it is the losers who have a story to tell.

This year has been full of stories. City cleared out Manchester and the league with minimal effort; Madrid did the three-peat with help from Satan’s ambassador on earth, Sergio Ramos; the Sixers were at sixes and sevens; the Rockets failed to take-off, and the Warriors and the Cavs are meeting once more in the NBA finals.

Then the World Cup starts, that football festival rife with losers and only one winner. It’s anyone’s guess who will come out on top.

I have no grand theories about what should be or what could be – I am a career sore loser. Which is why the only thing that holds truth is that the winner takes it all.

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