Sports is not just something for the few and fit. All of us who are overweight, sedentary, middle-aged, etc., can become "a hero just by making a first laborious, agonizing circuit of the track. Six months or a year later, many pounds lighter, eyes glowing, that person may provide a model of the potential that exists in every one of us. To go a step further: If that same person, recognizably transformed in body, mind, and spirit, takes this experience as the impetus for further explorations and boundary crossings and the heightening of awareness, then he or she must be said to have embodied the ultimate athletic ideal."
"The Ultimate Athlete" is the truest embodiment of The Olympic Creed, as expressed by Baron de Coubertin: "The important thing in the Olympic games is not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well."
