It is not enough to come first to win a race. It is also necessary that your pursuers were not faster. Does that sound absurd to you? Yet that is what happened with the 9th edition of the Vendée Globe.
On Wednesday evening, Charlie Dalin is the first to cross the finish line at Les Sables d’Olonne, after having sailed for 80 days around the world. A few hours later, Louis Burton arrived in his turn, soon followed by Yannick Bestaven: it was he who was declared the winner. The cause is well known: for having diverted himself during the race in order to assist another competitor, the skipper benefits from a bonus time, ten hours which were enough to upset the classification.
Fair decision: by diverting himself to help another navigator, Yannick Bestaven lost time on his competitors. But nothing says that if he had followed his route, he would have come out on top. Perhaps his boat would have suffered damage, that it would still be at sea. Symbolically, the Vendée Globe management has therefore also chosen to reward an act of pure altruism, a valiant gesture that falls within the code of honor of navigation.
Well, why not make it the main criterion of distinction in sports competitions? Why should whoever comes first always have to be declared the winner? Especially since the top step of the podium does not always guarantee you have been the best. Take a look, for example, at the winners of the Tour de France cyclist in the first decade of the 21st century: Lance Armstrong, but also Floyd Landis and Alberto Contador were dispossessed of their titles after having doped. So much so that some suggested attributing the yellow jersey to the red lantern.
Cycling is also a good example of a racing sport where the hierarchy does not depend only on the stopwatch. If Raymond Poulidor was so popular, it is because he was the eternal second. For my part, I once participated in cycling criteria of a new kind: you had to calculate, on a road map, the distance to be covered, choose an average speed to complete the route, and arrive at your destination to the nearest minute: whoever won was the smartest before being the fastest.
Obviously, such an approach presents some obstacles. On what basis, for example, to judge a 100 meters if it is not to the fastest athlete that the gold medal is promised? The effort produced? the progress made? It would probably be less explosive in the race, but not necessarily less spectacular, a matter of habit in fact.
It goes without saying that such a transition in the world of sports competition is illusory, although there are disciplines where the result may depend solely on the attitude of the competitors: this is the case for example in certain judo fights. , where victory goes to the most combative athlete. But most often, performance is measured in figures: in seconds elapsed, in meters covered, in goals scored.
To tell the truth, it is not only sports competition that uses such criteria without thinking of calling them into question. The educational institution, with its grading system, follows more or less the same logic: the best students are not always the most valiant. And what about the way employee and company performance is taken into account? The politics of numbers are everywhere.
These are the strange thoughts that plunged me into the disputed arrival of the Vendée Globe yesterday. A pure exercise in thought, because obviously, it would be very unreasonable to change our performance indicators. Too bad: Jean Le Cam, who arrived 8th last night in Les Sables d’Olonne after having saved the life of his colleague Kevin Escoffier, would nevertheless have deserved to win the trophy.
