Greater success in competition lies in competing with your betters, and for your country.

AFTER two weeks of Olympic excitement, the one thing I’ve observed is that, when competing with rivals who are much better than you, sometimes you can surprise yourself.

Who would have thought that a slip of a girl from Malaysia called Pandelela Rinong could win our country’s first-ever diving bronze? From 10th place, she kept her cool and slowly made her way up until she was third in the standings. Competing with the best in the world, she bested all our expectations.

The same holds true for many of the other athletes. Lee Chong Wei may not have won the gold but anyone who watched the thrilling match against Lin Dan knows that our player outdid himself that day.

He played for his life, under intense pressure, watched by millions of people and lost by a whisker. There was everything to be proud of, nothing to be ashamed of at all. Even in swimming, which everyone thought would be dominated by the US, there were surprises. No French swimmer’s name trips off our tongue very easily unlike Phelps’ and Lochte’s, but they shocked everyone by winning gold against the US and Australia’s formidable teams.

Which just goes to show that when you set a higher bar for yourself, you are likely to surpass all expectations.

That can only be done if you’re constantly competing against people who are better than you, not worse.

Athletes, like everyone else, need always to be looking up the rankings ladder, not down. There is no glory in competing with those worse than you.

Of course, when it comes to sports, training and everything else that goes with high performance must be there. You can’t simply pray yourself to win.

That would be like praying that you will pass exams without doing any studying. There is no substitute for absolute fitness, proper nutrition and the right technical training. If a man with no legs like Oscar Pistorius can qualify for the 400-metres finals, there’s no telling what a man with both his legs can do if he had the same dedication and ambition.

Nor does it require much money. The tiny country of Jamaica with only 2.7 million people has more Olympic medals per capita than any other country in the world, all of them from running races. The fastest man on earth Usain Bolt is Jamaican.

When asked why this should be so, the head coach of the Jamaican team simply pointed out that running is not an expensive sport requiring no equipment besides shoes.

But equally important is that in Jamaica, there are running competitions almost every weekend all over the country. Kids get lots of opportunities to run races and if they’re fast, they’re soon spotted for specialised training.

Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake may be the top names now but there’s a queue waiting back home to take over in the next few years.

Which brings us to the question: who comes after Chong Wei? Who’s the next Pandelela, especially after what we read about the facilities available to her?

Even if Nicol David succeeds in her campaign to get squash back into the Olympics by 2020, would she still be able to retain her No.1 ranking eight years from now? Who’s next?

I can’t believe that people are talking about Chong Wei for the next Olympics. Shouldn’t we be nurturing the next champions now?

We won’t ever be able to achieve Olympic success if our sporting talent is so thin on the ground.

As long as our focus is only on a few athletes, without a supporting programme to bring in lots of new ones, we will not achieve it.

Our top athletes will eventually burn out and we should not wait until they do before searching for new ones. There has to be a well-organised pipeline of athletes in as many sports as possible.

To do that, we need to give as many of our kids greater exposure to all types of sports. Not just to watch but to participate. It doesn’t matter if they don’t win at first, after all competition temperament is something that can be gained only by experience.

But they will improve and who knows, at crunch time, they may just, like Pandelela, come through.

But when sports are sidelined by exams, stereotyped by ethnicity, or used for political gain, what hope do we have?

Instead of sending so many officials to international meets, why not bring along young people, even if they don’t compete, just so they understand the thrill of competing for their country?

Given the many tears at London’s medal ceremonies by even seasoned athletes, winning for your country, rather than for yourself, may be the best gold medal lesson of all.

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