WORDS Ann Rennie

It doesn’t matter whether we are first past the post, it’s how we compete that counts.

Back in the day, I was a pretty handy netballer, a gritty wing attack, who, although not the fastest or the fittest, could read the play intelligently and had a bullet pass. There was nothing like those fierce schoolgirl competitions to get the blood boiling and the school spirit soaring, even if there was a bit of bumping behind the play. I played the game until my roaring forties. And although no-one would categorise me as ‘sporty’ I can still throw a ball powerfully and do a bit of huff and puff passing with my daughter whose game style and preference for position is eerily similar to mine.

These days I have the pedometer as a permanent appendage and try to do the 10,000 steps needed to keep fit-ish. My terrain is the school and suburbs, nothing too strenuous, except the odd flight of stairs.

As Paul writes in the second letter to Timothy: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’

Our lives can be like spiritual marathons. We may not be as spiritually athletic as the saints, as muscular in our faith as we could be. In fact, most of us probably veer between the occasional peak performance and the jog of life in the slow lane. But those personal bests give us the impetus to keep going, to find that reserve that enables us to spur ahead.

Skills learnt in sport are life skills - cooperation, respect, discipline, teamwork. Sometimes we witness rare moments of grace in sport; where good sportsmanship transcends the competition and we are at our best, even if we aren’t winners.

I think of moments in our Australian sporting history: John Landy, the second man in the world to break the 4 minute mile, stopping in a championship race to help up the young Ron Clarke who had stumbled and going on to win so much more than the 1500 metre race; Kerryn McCann’s gutsy marathon win at the Commonwealth Games in 2006 where the lead changed six times and she was borne home on the wings and will of her home crowd at the MCG; the longest tennis match in history played last year at Wimbledon, an 11 hour epic in the first round, between John Isner and Nicholas Mahut. And who can ever forget Eric the Eel’s dogged swim in the 2000 Olympics? He may have come a distant last, but he won our hearts.

In the race of our lives, we may stumble and falter and slow down. But what we must have is the spirit of endurance, to keep the faith when the winner’s podium is not in sight, when the finishing line can’t be glimpsed, when the others are so far in front that we seem all alone, and when we are on our knees.

For God, it does not matter where we come. We have been good sports. We have made it home. We have kept the faith.