The Courage to Continue: What keeps champions going when there is little left to win?

He cut a forlorn figure in a sea of humanity. It has been a week since Lionel Messi stood by himself as red shirts around him exulted in celebration. At 39, Messi knew his quest to re-feel the feeling he had felt four years ago lay shattered. He had been divine all tournament – with left foot and right, servicing his grateful team, and finding the back of the net in the most critical moments. Yet, there he was, standing alone, crestfallen and broken – the most human of gods.

Sport places a unique burden on its most elite practitioners, one that everyday mortals can never quite fathom. As their stellar careers progress, and the accomplishments stack up, the inevitable questions start creeping into the discourse: What more is left to achieve? Why continue punishing the body and mind? How will another title embellish this already glorious career?

Such questions reduce mighty sportspersons to mere bean counters. But they are far more than that. They define themselves not only by giddy success, but also by the private battles they overcome. Barely a week before Messi endured the trauma of watching his World Cup dream melt away after an unusually insipid performance, another modern-day colossus was reminded of his fragility.


Novak Djokovic is also 39. At Wimbledon, while the narrative was about his quest for an unprecedented 25th major title, the Serb was on a journey of self-discovery. Blocking the surround sound out, he willed his body and mind to emerge victorious in a
brutal quarterfinal that lasted over five hours. A couple of days later, across him stood a rival that simply eviscerated the mighty Serb. On a court where he had crafted some of the grandest moments of his career, Djokovic was visibly brittle — a step
slower, his shoulders drooping as his younger opponent, at the peak of his powers, clinically dismantled any hopes of a miracle. Djokovic was, just as Messi would be in the very near future — human.

“It is kind of that internal battle really of what I’ve been through for the 20-plus years of my career, what the goals were always, the expectations, and trying to balance it out and really be a little more humble in that sense,” he reflected later, in a searing self-assessment. “I feel when I’m healthy; I’m still able to play as a top-five player, still able to compete at the highest level.”

It is in these moments of vulnerability that elite athletes reveal what powers their obstinate refusal to walk quietly into the sunset. Only recently, as speculation over his retirement swirled across social media, Rohit Sharma walked onto the hallowed turf at Lord’s. The arena was his refuge, away from the clutter and comment, where he was just reacting to a ball hurled his way, doing what had defined his life – bat. The hundred he produced, peppered with some signature stroke-making from his playlist, was much more than yet another statistic.

Much like Djokovic, Rohit reaffirmed to himself that he was “still able to compete at the highest level.” That internal battle had been won, and fittingly, he left the decision on whether a 40-year-old should be part of India’s quest to win the World Cup
in South Africa in a little over a year, in the hands of those entrusted to make it. Rohit had done his part. He had prepared. Competed. Delivered.

Sport, in essence, is an intensely private jostle that plays out in full public glare. The joy of watching the very best practitioners of a craft is not merely in ticking off measurable outcomes. It is in understanding their embrace of vulnerability, and in their refusal to cave in simply because failure could pockmark the grandeur of the feats of their storied careers.