Friday, March 21, 2008
Is winning important in sports?

I think that winning is definitely important in sport. To say that winning isn’t important is utterly an absurd. Without the motivating desire to excel and win, would sportsmen even train that hard just to compete with others?

For fame, recognition and even money, most sportsmen have tried all orthodox means to strive to win. They spent their days training mindlessly, regulating their diet, and even sacrificing their time that could have been better well-spent with their family and friends. If one would to say that winning isn’t important in sports, does it even makes sense to sacrifice that much and put in so much efforts? If it isn’t important to people, I will definitely see no need for major sports events like Olympic Games, World Cup and PGA World Tour. The competitiveness amongst the competitors wouldn’t be there as sportspeople would simply be playing for “fun” or leisure sake, not for the goal in mind to win and stand out in the competition. Even to colleges’ extent, students trained hard in their sport CCAs, sacrificing their time and even school works just to win. Why would we want to join a sport competition and train so hard prior to it if we do not desire to win? It doesn’t make sense!

However, to say that winning is important in sports doesn’t means that winning by unorthodox method is correct. Some sportsmen took drugs to improve the performance so that they could stand a higher chance to win in the sports events. Obviously, this means of winning is clearly wrong. Although winning is important, winning by such foul play will reflect badly upon the wrongdoers and be unfair to the other competitors, which point us to another aspect of sports -sportsmanship. A good sportsman holds the importance of winning and at the same time possesses qualities such as fairness and being a cheerful loser. Even if one desires to win, one should never use foul means to fulfill their desire, but to compete fair and square with others. These also point out that though winning is important, it is not everything. There is no need for foul play just to win.

Chew Shi Xiong (9)