“Integrity over everything.”
The team stands defeated. They lost by a couple of points. There are mixed emotions. The day before they had received credit for something they did not do. A lifter on the team was credited for a 245# lift even though she only lifted 235#. She turned herself in because it was the right thing to do. Had they not told anyone, they might have been above the cut line and made their training dreams come true. One athlete was coming off of a surgery, the team roster hadn’t been solidified until the last minute. So much pressure was on one competition. There is a phrase, “if you’re not cheating you’re not trying” and perhaps winning would have felt good enough to forget that it was a lie.
Putting winning over everything and cheating to do it seems like the easy way out. It is much more difficult to stand in defeat with a moral compass intact. No one can see a moral compass, but they can see a leaderboard. Most likely no one would have known if they lied. Even if it did come out, plausible deniability would not have been difficult. It would have been easy to say they never did the math on their lifts after they walked off the training floor. Cheating does take work, but I still see it as the easy road. This group of athletes decided to walk the less traveled path of disappointment. They went to the judges table, turned themselves in.
They had to accept that this meant less glory, money, and attention. A year of hard work ended early. It was a painful and self sacrificial decision to do the right thing. Putting the truth above your personal desires is a reflection of a moral character that builds humanity in a cooperative way. Cheating to win is training an inner selfish parasite. Sadly, this toxic trait can lead to idolization.
Luckily, or perhaps as a result of what TTT has been striving to create, we don’t attract many of those types of demons. Those wearing our gear are marred in sweat, tears, and bruises after striving through two days of arduous work. These four humans stand humbly resigned.
Maybe in that moment they had fleeting thoughts of regret. But I was so proud of them. Full stop. Gaining fame, notoriety, and success when you did not actually earn them cannot sooth the spiritual pain that comes as a result of being disconnected from healthy and cooperative relationships. We reap what we sow from a humanistic perspective.
I am more proud of them standing there as losers with integrity than had they punched a qualification ticket whilst lying about their scores. This is a group that operates with integrity. In that moment they should have humbled us all.
The team actually qualified. We had done our math incorrectly and one of the teams that was two spots ahead of them had a difficult last event and there were enough teams in between they captured the final spot to the games.
We celebrate.
I cannot express the feelings of gratitude I have to be surrounded by good people. They may not be champions according to the leaderboard, but they are champions of morals who contribute to a stronger collective humanity. This is what I want TTT to stand for and I couldn’t be more grateful for a healthy culture to call home.
As the powerful young athlete said, we will continue to strive to operate with “...integrity over everything.”
