Inspirational Sunday: the Olympic story we never heard.

We read this little article on Yahoo Sports’ coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics. It’s about a tiny young woman from Somalia who competed in the 20 meter dash. She was the slowest of the pack. So slow, that her 8 seconds difference from the rest of the runners left her alone on the track. There’s no way the half-full stadium will miss her and they roared and applauded as she crossed the finish line.

We sure could use the following words from her for inspiration, “I was happy the people were cheering and encouraging me but I would have liked to be cheered because I won, not because I needed encouragement. It is something I will work on. I will try my best not to be the last person next time. It was nice for people to give me that encouragement, but I would prefer the winning cheer.”

She accepts that she could never be at par with champion athletes who has unlimited funding and support at their disposal, not while she lives in war-torn Somalia where daily survival is the priority. So she sets a sensible goal for herself, which is not to be the last person to cross the finish line in London.

Do we feel the same way when we read stories of A-list bloggers, elite webmasters, master affiliate marketers, and famous teen entrepreneurs? Do we daydream of flashing thousand dollars Google Adsense checks for the world to see? We might only be setting ourselves up for failure because we simply have different resources, talents, skills, and priorities. Ground our goals on reality like Samia, she was proud to stand beside her country’s flag in the Olympics and her country is proud of her. How we feel about ourselves is the measure of success.

As that Yahoo story ended, Samia and her compatriot Abdi came and went from Beijing largely unnoticed, but they may have been the most dignified example of athletes the past Olympics could offer.