Sometimes the losers are remembered more

I've been meaning to blog for a few weeks now, but time has a way of disappearing on me.  All that to say that I apologize if this post is a bit dated.

I am talking of course about Butler's epic near miss of winning a National Championship!  It was the perfect underdog story in the perfect city and it even had the whole Hoosiers thing going on.  But alas, real life often doesn't follow the script of reel life and a half court heave that climaxes a fairy tale script painfully misses by mere inches.

All is not lost though.  I think this is one of the rare occasions where the loser will actually be remembered more than the winner.  For whatever reason, a loser sometimes captures our imagination whether we identify with them or they have an epic collapse or they show the heart of a lion.

I think of Jean Van De Velde or Greg Norman whose names have become synonymous with gargantuan collapses.  I think of Andy Roddick at last year at Wimbledon who left everything he had on the court and remade his image in the course of a few drawn out hours.  I think of the one loser who may capture these qualities more than any other story.  I was listening to the story of Julie Moss in the 1982 Iron Man.  She was a 23 year old College Student who just did the race trying to get a degree.  Amazingly though, she found herself winning by 20 minutes in the run.  At the end of the race, her body just gave out on her in a fashion that is painful to watch on video.  After competing for 11 hours and being 30 yards from the finish, her body just gave up on her.  She was passed for the victory, but yet she was determined to finish.  In a remarkable display of courage, she crawled to the finish to win the hearts of millions.  Yes, sometimes we learn more from the losers and remember their story.  Hollywood be damned.

Video of her finish:
http://www.livevideo.com/video/4FE1ED0A9D254E39A0EE2405DAE105F5/julie-moss-1982-hawaii-ironma.aspx