February 20, 2006
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Tonight, I am proud of my Norwegian heritage. My newest hero is the captain of the Norwegian cross country team, Bjørnar Håkensmoen. (I hope your browser correctly interprets those nynorsk characters... please ask me for help before you pronounce it)
Imagine the scene (you probably haven't seen it on NBC, that's for sure: they are busy making much of Olympic negativity and feuding): cross-country racers pressing hard across the snow. Canadian, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish skiers are ahead of the pack, jockeying for position. Suddenly one of the athletes of a pair favored to win, a Canadian, snaps a ski pole. She labors on, "limping" with her remaining pole, but is rapidly losing ground and being passed by the others. Canada's hopes are dashed.
Until a stranger steps out from the crowd, hurries up to her and presses a ski pole into her hand. His own ski pole.
It is too long for her of course, the stranger is a tall man, but she is determined to make do with it. She "makes do" so well that she makes up her lost time and then some, and the two-woman Canadian team manages to win the silver medal.
"skiers canadiennes" with silver medalsWithout that stranger's interference, the Norwegian team would have been on the podium with a bronze medal. This is the first time since 1976 that Norway has not medalled in this event (and they usually win silver, as a matter of fact; sometimes gold). But because of the man parting with his ski pole, the Norwegians finish fourth.
As it turned out, it was the Norwegian ski chief himself who gave his ski pole to the Canadian, who went on to beat his own beloved team... and in a sport which is more beloved in Norway than football basketball and baseball are in America.
How did Bjørnar's team members react to their leader's largesse? (imagine Chad Hedrick's reaction, if his own coach enabled a competitor to beat him), Did the Norwegian press excoriate him for his noble deed? (Norway lives for the sports embodied in the Winter Olympics) Or is there, indeed, something more important than winning?
Read about it in Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper (one that publishes an English-language edition for us expatriates).
Note that, though honor and character are more important than winning (at least to Bjørnar and the vast majority of Norway), the Norwegians do not sit around writing sonnets about honor and character. They train hard, strive to win... and demonstrate their honor and character in concrete ways on the battlefield of sport and life.
Comments (1)
Glad that someone in American media noticed this. Here is Dave Hyde's take on what happened:
'Winning Is Not Everything'
By Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
TURIN, Italy — The day after costing his team a medal in his country's national sport, he received a bottle of wine in thanks.
His embassy in Canada began receiving appreciation too — several bouquets of flowers, dozens of letters and hundreds of e-mails.
Then a Canadian travel company offered a week's stay at a luxury hotel in Banff. Be our guest. See the Canadian Rockies. Bring your family too.
Bjornar Hakensmoen still doesn't get it.
"I was just standing there, and this skier had broken her pole," the Norwegian cross-country coach said. "So I gave her one. That is the whole story."
This is what the Olympics can be on their best days. This little story. This big reaction. This outpouring of humanity between countries that aren't necessarily ours, in a sport we don't really care about, at a Winter Games where most American emotion is spent either chiding a snowboarder for showboating, a skier for flopping or simply wondering what happened to all of our medals.
Every American should hear this story too.
This was the scene: Canadian cross-country skier Sara Renner was in the third lap of a six-lap sprint relay. The Canadians were favored and she was leading.
Then her ski pole snapped.
That's like losing your bat in baseball, your stick in hockey.
Crippled now, Renner soldiered on, but watched the Finn ski by. Then the Swede. Then the Norwegian passed too, and so there, down the course, ahead of her in the snow, went the gold, silver and bronze medals.
"I was flapping around, watching everyone pass me," she said.
That's when she was helped by her "mystery man," as she called him.
She didn't know Hakensmoen. He was just another person standing along the course.
A few seconds earlier, he had yelled encouragement to his skier. This is his last year as coach of the Norwegian Olympic team. Every medal means something to him. And Norway was on the medal bubble in an event that their country embraces.
But when he saw a competitor missing a pole, Hakensmoen didn't rate her nationality against what it meant for Norway. He held out his pole. She took it.
It was seven inches longer than Renner's normal one, but that didn't matter. It got Canada back in the race. It allowed her to catch up, so when she completed her leg, Canada was 2.5 seconds behind the leader.
Cut to the finish line: Canada finished second, narrowly edged out by the Swedes. Naturally, everyone wondered about the broken ski pole and what might have been. Others noticed something else, though.
Norway had finished fourth.
By helping heavyweight Canada, the coach hurt his team. He cost it a medal. You can fill in the comparison. Would the Yankees ever help the Red Sox, if they could? Or the Florida football team help Florida State in the middle of a game?
"Nobody in Norway has said anything bad to me," Hakensmoen said. "They expect me to do that. Yes, cross-country is very big in Norway. But winning is not everything.
"If you win, but don't help somebody when you should have, what win is that? I was just helping a girl in big trouble.
"The equipment shouldn't determine the winner. The heart and talent should determine the winner. That's my opinion, anyway. Hopefully, it's something other guys will think of next time."
The bottle of wine, by the way, came from Renner. Hakensmoen hasn't opened it yet.
"I will do that when I go home and think back on these Olympic Games with my wife," he said.
Sometimes, nice guys finish fourth.