Credit

Just finished watching the Canadian Olympic Women's Hockey Team dispatch the Kazakhstan team 7-0. The Kazakhstani goal tender suffered through 64 shots, improving as the game went on even though her teammates lagged behind the powerful Canadian team.

When the game hit 5-0, I found myself cheering 'Come on! Come on!' each time a Kazakhstan player would break through and make an attempt at the net. It wasn't for lack of effort that they fell so far behind, but that they were playing a super-power in Women's hockey. I just wanted to see them get a decent scoring chance. Maybe even a goal.

Don't get me wrong, it's not because I want the Canadian team to lose. Hardly! I just felt as though the Kazakhstanis played a good game against a far superior team, and kept going long after it was over.

That's what the Olympics are really about: playing to the best of your ability, even though you might not make the podium.

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt said that in 1910. I hardly think his quote is limited to men.