Written by For many in sport, striving to be their best and comparing their efforts against their competition is what pushes the boundaries of performance.
Double Olympic Heptathlon Champion Daley Thompson once said he would train twice on Christmas day as he presumed his competitors would only train once.
The word competition comes from the latin word ‘competere’ which means ‘to strive together’ – the pursuit of competing was a shared experience. Unfortunately the money and adulation that comes with winning has slightly stalled the ‘together’ part within competition and different forms of cheating has occurred as a result.
Doping is an obvious example of cheating your opposition to beat them. Sabotage of an opposition is another example of cheating opposition with a notorious example being Tonya Harding paying someone to injure her Ice Skating opponent Nancy Kerrigan.
A third way of cheating the competition is a financial one. Some countries finance their Olympians better, some teams have more finances for recruitment or equipment, some individuals have better sponsorship. Finances are largely not going to be equal. There are examples of sports in which they try and mitigate this difference in finance by having salary caps as exampled with Rugby Union in England and the NFL. When the top Rugby team in Europe, Saracans, were caught circumventing the salary cap to gain a competitive advantage they were cheating their competition. As a result they were relegated from the top league and are currently playing in the second tier.
There are then some in performance sport for whom competition is not what they want at all.
Juventus soccer team President Andre Agnelli was quoted as saying that Atalanta, a team without a storied history of success but one that had qualified for that seasons UEFA Champions League (European Cup), were not justified in being in the competition off the back of only one good season. In 2011 UEFA brought in the Financial Fair Play (FFP) to stop wealthy individuals – like Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich – or wealthy countries, like Manchester City owners the Abu Dhabi royal family, from buying their way to the top of the football pyramid. The idea was to benefit those teams that had built their success over decades like Real Madrid and AC Milan had historically done. In the end all FFP did was pull the bridge up behind the last clubs to have hugely wealthy owners – this severely limited the chances of new teams competing at the top levels with the more renowned football clubs.
Leicester City winning the English Premier League in 2016 was a great tale for the romantic about the small club beating the giants to win the biggest league competition in football – beating odds of 500-1 at the beginning of the season. FFP was meant to stop this from happening but it hadn’t. A new way of ensuring ongoing success for the ‘big clubs’ was needed – particularly on the accounts spreadsheet – in the form of a no- competition European wide league where relegation doesn’t exist and the league is invitation only. Those who have created the league would have a huge financial benefit over those invited into the league and even more financial benefit over those who remain in the domestic leagues. There is a huge difference between having a financial advantage and stopping others from competing due to finances.
Fundamentally competition should be about two things.
- Focusing on being the very best that you can be – doing all you can legally and ethically in this pursuit.
- Hoping that your opposition are in a position to do the same.
These two things will increase the level of competition which benefits everybody. Trying to cheat your opposition will ultimately lead to you cheating yourself of the feeling of winning the right way, at your absolute best, against the absolute best. The learning from this is immeasurably beneficial.