You’ll See

Don’t even blink, it will be so fast you might miss it

All my life I’ve been running. From bullies, from teachers, from shame, and later from hunger, from bullets, from cops.

I’ve been running after elusive hassles, and more often than not after a loaf of bread, when you’ve been running the course of honors. I’ve been running on an empty stomach, bare feet on the cold concrete, when you were running after a world record in 500 dollar-running shoes. I was running after my life while you were rushing to the podium, running for gold and eschewing silver.

But now, things have changed. I am the underdog. It took a lot of blood and tears. It took a lot mockery from people like you, to whom I may not look like much, with my tired borrowed sneakers, to whom I may not sound like much with my weird accent, in this lingua franca of the 21st century I can barely speak. I can hear it in your laughs.

You’ll see.

The Olympic games were never the same ever since. This guy just came out of nowhere and destroyed the 100m sprint in just 33 steps, with a headwind of -1.6m/s.

The time it took him? 07:81 seconds. The previous record of 09:58 seconds had stood unscathed for more than thirty years. The 100-meter sprint lost its shine after that, and most sprint athletes turned to other disciplines. No one could fathom this new world record. It was too great a goal to reach. It was way beyond what mere mortals could hope to achieve.

One can only wonder. He had been racing great contenders day in day out, maybe the greatest of all contenders you can encounter in a lifetime. Misery. Adversity. And for once, just for once, he was not racing for his life.

That gave him wings. The rest is history.

Let the board sound

Rabih