The power of finishing what you have started

rewards in recent years that some have blamed for the cheating through the use of performance enhancing substances that has characterised the modern games.
At the Mexico Games of 1968, at the start of the marathon, the crowds’ expectations were all focused on the usual suspects from who the first, second and third finishers were possibly to be drawn from. After the race had been declared over, the medal award ceremony done and all the Press conferences relating to the marathon were completed, people began to leave the stadium.

A small part of the remaining crowd in the stadium started cheering and clapping their hands in the corner. This had been sparked by the realisation that the lonely figure that got into the stadium and on to the track running was one of the participants in the marathon that had finished a few hours earlier. As the whole stadium got to also realise, they all erupted into cheers edging on the lone runner. The lone runner got on the track and did his full lap as would have been done by his colleagues in the same race earlier. With every stride he took, the whole stadium on their feet clapped. With the greatest of determination, bleeding heavily on his self-bandaged knee from an earlier fall, the lone runner crossed the finish line.

The lone runner had done something that had left all present perplexed. He was so far behind in the race that it didn’t matter.
No one ever knew, with exception of those from his home country perhaps, that the lone runner was in the race. Even those that knew he had started the race had probably forgotten all about him.
When asked later by a journalist why he had bothered to carry on running, knowing fully well that he was nowhere near the winners, the lone runner answered simply: “My country did not send me

10 000 miles just to start the race, they send me here to finish”.
The name of the lone runner was John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania. He started the race like everyone else, but what he dared to do was that he finished.

This is a point often missed by many that it is not about starting something but more about finishing what has been started. It is very easy to start anything. The challenge is whether the discipline and stamina is there to finish. How many have started a programme of study? How many have started a business? How many have embarked on a project or challenge? Of those that started, how many ever saw their endeavour through? It is only those that finish what they started that history remembers.

This point is also better illustrated in another sporting discipline of Formula One motor car racing. To be in the race, all cars have to qualify by finishing round the track to determine their starting position on the grid. All qualifying cars line up at the starting grid, but from that field some will crash out and some will develop mechanical faults. It is those that finish the race that stand a chance to be at the podium having taken one of the top three spots or good enough a position to collect points towards the championship. A small team starting out life in Formula One will focus all their energies towards finishing as many races as possible.

It is from the finished races that it will build on in subsequent years to finishing in higher positions.
The primary focus of the teams is thus to finish the race before considerations are made about what position they will finish.

What Akhwari accomplished back then in Mexico was the beginning of a legacy.
Such was his inspiration that the same marathon that he only dared to finish albeit in last place has only ever been won by someone from his home country Tanzania or neighbouring east African countries of Kenya and Ethiopia.

That is the power of finish what you have started. When you finish, you motivate and inspire others.
It has to be remembered that for a long time, black Africans were not considered to be capable of competing in a marathon successfully because they lacked the mental stamina and capacity to tactically run the race.

By finishing the race in Mexico, Akhwari changed that belief.
He may not have won a medal at the Mexico games, but what Akhwari did produced a whole generation of Olympic gold medallists and world champions.

Such was the power of his feat that at the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000, he was honoured with a gold medal for having displayed the true Olympic spirit. That is the power of finishing what you have started.