ERIC MOUSSAMBANI may have been one of the slowest swimmers inOlympic history, but he has been catapulted in record time to thatsection of the hall of fame reserved for heroic failures. He had sovery little practice, he explained, because he could only train inthe 20-metre hotel pool in his native Equatorial Guinea for twohours a week or in the sea when the sharks weren't too close.Wisely, on such a slight acquaintance with water, Mr Moussambani didnot put his head under the surface and proceeded down the pool atsuch an uneven pace the lifeguards feared for his safety.
His is the perfect romantic Olympic failure saga - funny,touching, brave and instructive. Like many of the small impoverishedcountries thattake their place among the muscle-bound titans of thedeveloped world, he is also part of a wider trend - the rebirth ofthe Olympics as a platform for smaller, poorer or threatenedcountries to remind the richer, faster, stronger world that theyexist.
The more professional the Olympics become, the more dazzling theachievements and the more brazenly the top athletes seek out theirfuture commercial opportunities (the track and pool have becomecatwalks for next year's High Street sportswear), the more the eventdemands its share of contrasting characters. We would, otherwise,wilt under the exposure to so much unrelenting Lycra-encasedexcellence.
Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards, the undisputed template for moderngreat sporting failures, created the perfect foil to all thoseforgettable soaring Austrians. Gravity meant something to Eddie. TheJamaican bobsleigh team had a Hollywood film made about it, which ismore than can be said for the winners.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I relished the Olympic Gamesbecause they always produced some shooting-star moments to treasure -a new Florence Griffith Joyner, a record shattered. Watching themnow, in the still grey of the peculiarly unsociable hours of livecoverage, I realise that I neglected a vital factor: the presence ofexhilarating losers.
The best of them are as memorable, if not more so, than thechampions. A wooden spoon, if it is won with the dedication andcharm of Mr Moussambani, is a more uplifting spectacle than the goldmedal around the neck of the perfectly nourished, perfectly trainedand probably perfectly hormonally enhanced competitor.
The old drama of the Games used to stem from their position as amicrocosmic image of the less agreeable tournament of the Cold War.The memorable ice-hockey clashes between the USSR and the USA werenothing short of full mortal combat in protective headgear. Strainswithin the loveless world family revealed themselves in the markingsystems: 'And it's 6- 6-5.9-6 for the American and - oh look, a 4from the East German judge.'
The new Olympics are a snapshot of an altered, shifting worldwith new countries emerging from wars or independence struggles andthe developing world looking for opportunities to remind us thatthey too make up the globe. The Bosnian team's appearance in Atlanta1996 was confirmation that the break-up of Yugoslavia, howeverbloody and incomplete, was an established fact. Their athletes werethere to tell the world that there was no going back to the hegemonyof Belgrade. East Timor has sent its delegation to Sydney in thesame heady spirit of newly recognised autonomy from Indonesia.Somalia has sent women to compete for the first time.
The other service so usefully performed by Mr Moussambani'sunsteady progress, was to remind us how difficult competitive sportis. His agony in the home straight was a reminder of just how bloodybig an Olympic- sized swimming pool is.
Television is a taming medium. It makes the outstanding lookcommonplace, the near-impossible appear easy. The football pitchseems so small and manageable, the 800 metres a mere trot twiceround that springy track. Watch a football game from the touchline,the crashing tackles, the gouged turf, the sheer yawning dimensionsof that goalmouth, or the anxious bunching of the athletes at thebend, and the experience is entirely different. It is like lookingat a Monet close up.
The real enemy of interest in sport is its reduction to merefractions of seconds or points. These are the way it measures outsuccess and failure. But they are not its raison d'etre. Wonderingwhat divine spark had gone out of the gymnastics competition, itstruck me that the skills of even the mid-ranked gymnasts today farexceed the modest single somersaults of Olga Korbut in 1972. Today'scompetitors complete vastly complex routines, yet there is noappreciable sign of enjoyment. The scoring system has been refinedto produce results like 9.565. How that differs from 9.570, even themost skilled judge would be pushed to explain.
That the Games first came to life in the popular imagination whenMr Moussambani gave us all a grand failure to cheer says somethingbroader about the modern condition. Democratic politics is goingthrough a period in which carefully calibrated multi-skilledperformers bore us rigid while the defeated or frustrated earn ourundying admiration. When the Blairs, Gores, Jospins and Schrodersfail to ignite our passions, we enjoy revisiting the ones who didn'tmake it on the off-chance that there might be something remarkablelurking in there that we hadn't noticed.
Tomorrow night, Radio 4 will review whether Michael Foot'sleadership of the Labour Party was really a disaster. Apparently,the programme ventures that things might have been even worsewithout him. This is pushing it some. Mr Foot led his party to thebiggest defeat in its history. His legacy was an unelectable,distant, self-absorbed party which remained out of power for apolitical generation. I cannot bring myself to feel a warmMoussambani-related glow about him, but apparently some people (notall of them Conservatives) do.
The same attachment to romantic failure makes us so quick toacclaim 'the best prime ministers Britain never had'. MichaelHeseltine rules this nearly-made-it Valhalla. On Sunday night hislimpid blue eyes filled with tears as he told how he had missed hischance to become Prime Minister when ill-health denied him the Toryleadership in 1997.
At the risk of sounding brutal in the face of such rampantemotion, Mr Heseltine's leadership of the Conservative Party at thattime would have resulted in an irreparable split (since he isuncompromisingly pro- single currency). It would probably have ledto an even worse result at the next election than Mr Hague faces.
But not getting there always leaves open the seductivepossibility that they might, after all, have been marvellous if onlythey had. John Smith, in large parts of the Labour imagination,would have been as widely accepted as Tony Blair, while presidingover a New Jerusalem of perfect egalitarianism.
Really, Mr Moussambani's future could not look brighter. His namewill endure when the gold-medallist is just another also-won. He hasbecome his small country's most famous living citizen and athoroughly marketable commodity outside it. Now and then, he may beplagued by a nightmare in which he finishes first. Fate has been farkinder to him. Nothing succeeds like failure.
a.mcelvoy@independent.co.uk
