What is the highest form of sportsmanship in a race? Runner #Ivan showed the world.

Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was a few meters away from the finish line but got confused by the track markings and thought he had completed the race. Spanish-speaking Ivan Fernandez was running behind him and realized that Abel was confused. Ivan started shouting at Abel to continue running, but Abel didn’t understand Spanish. Realizing that Abel didn’t understand, Fernandez pushed him towards the finish line.

A reporter who witnessed this asked Ivan, “Why did you do this?” Ivan replied, “My dream is that one day we can have a society where we push and help each other to win.”

The reporter pressed on, “But why did you let Kenya win?”

Ivan replied, “I didn’t let him win; he was going to win. The race was his.”

The reporter insisted, “But you could have won!”

Ivan looked at the reporter and said, “But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honor of this medal? What would my mother think of it?”

Values are passed from generation to generation. What values are we teaching our children? How much do we encourage others?

Most of us use others’ weaknesses to our advantage instead of helping them overcome those weaknesses. Ivan is a perfect example of how wrong this is.

How many of us align with Ivan’s actions?

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In school and college life, when discussing competition, our son often asked questions like Ivan’s. Today, we learned a valuable lesson from an Olympic runner for our son’s questions.

Thank you, Ivan…

Thanks to Vignesh Janarthanan’s Facebook post

A wonderful share to motivate  good values & goodwill in action.