Olympic Diary: Spirit lives on in losers

Two remarkable Olympic losers arrived in Sydney this week.

One became famous for his Olympic heroics. The other is hardly known and did not even get to the Games.

The more famous of the two is Tanzanian marathon runner John Stephens Akwhari, who continually fell as he came into the stadium at the 1968 marathon in Mexico City.

The closing ceremony was even delayed so Akwhari, his feet blistered and bandaged, could finish the race.

He then uttered the famous words: "My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish."

A hero in his country, he has an honorary position with the Tanzanian team and will march in the Games ceremonies.

The other athlete has already been around the Stadium Australia track many times.

He is a 74-year-old American, John Lucas, who is still dealing with his failure to make the Olympic team 48 years ago.

On the day before the start of all but two Olympics since those in Helsinki in 1952, Lucas runs his own 10,000m race on the Games tracks.

It is a journey that has taken him to Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City, Munich, Montreal, Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta. (He missed the 1980 boycotted games in Moscow.)

The run takes him about an hour now, as he tries to atone for his failure to make the Olympic team when he finished 11th in the trials nearly 50 years ago.

Lucas, from Boston, cried for weeks after those trials. Eight years later, while attending the Games in Rome, he struck on his lonely run idea.

The 25 laps took him 61 minutes at Stadium Australia, just 35 minutes outside the world record time of Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie.

They are two stories that represent what was the spirit of the Olympics, ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

The two men came from times before the Games became commercial monstrosities affected by drug scandals.

Now, they are more a chance to marvel at where full-time, high-performance training and the refinement of techniques can lead the human body.

Just try to put the drugs issue on hold as you watch your fellow men and women swim or run at extraordinary speeds, throw things remarkable distances and lift incredible weights.

And in the middle of a morass of money, corruption and drugs, there are still the athletes like Cathy Freeman, who represent not only athletic excellence, but also worthwhile political causes, in her case the fight for Aboriginal rights to a place in the Australian sun.

It will be the chance for New Zealanders to also marvel at Rob Waddell, Gary Anderson, Sarah Ulmer, Blyth Tait and company who have achieved so much from our sporting backwater.

And you only have to look through the list of New Zealanders representing their country in sports like shooting, softball, basketball and wrestling to know that ordinary people are still given the chance to do extraordinary things.

They include fitter/welders, a restaurant manager, a farmer, a postie, mothers, and teachers with their own sporting dreams, successes and failures.

The carrying of the Olympic torch has brought out the best in Australian community spirit.

Hopefully there will be no reason for that spirit to wane during the next fortnight.

It is now time for the competitors to take over. Hopefully, they will deliver Games to remember.