Of all things in sport, invention is perhaps the most delightful and suffering the most absorbing. Marathoners enthral me, so do solitary rowers across oceans, Arctic swimmers whose frozen hands can't grip the water and desert walkers who leave toenails in the sand. The other day I got an e-mail from a Singaporean who is training for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship which has been postponed to 2022. He is 72 wonderful years old.
"There is still some fight in me yet," he wrote and it is inspiring. Prising commitment out of the self is an uncommonly beautiful thing. It is why we admire athletes, precisely for this discipline, and in a Covid time it is something to imitate. After all, the finest virtue right now is to persist.
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