It is October 20, 1968, Mexico City, The Olympic Stadium. The time, 7:00 P.M. The closing ceremonies had just been completed. The spectators and athletes were gathering their belongings to leave the stadium. Then the announcer asked them to remain in their seats. Down the boulevard came the whine of police sirens and flashing blue lights, encircling someone making his way toward the stadium, moving slowly.
Everyone remained seated. The public address announcer announced that a final marathoner would be making his way into the arena and around the track to the finish line. Confusion was evident among the crowd. The last marathoner had come in hours ago. The medals had already been awarded. What had taken this man so long? But the first sign of the runner making his way out of the tunnel and onto the track told the whole story.
John Stephen Akhwari from Tanzania, covered with blood, hobbled into the light. He had taken a horrible fall early in the race, whacked his head, damaged his knee, and endured a trampling before he could get back on his feet. And there he was, over 40 kilometres later, stumbling his way to the finish line.
The response of the crowd was overwhelming and they gave him a thundering ovation that far exceeded the one given the man who, hours earlier, had come in first. When Akhwari crossed the finish line he collapsed into the arms of the medical personnel who immediately whisked him off to the hospital.
The next day, Akhwari appeared before sports journalists.
“Why, after sustaining the kinds of injuries you did, would you ever get up and proceed to the finish line, when there was no way you could possibly place in the race?” John Stephen Akhwari said: “My country did not send me over 11,000 kilometres to start a race. They sent me over 11,000 kilometres to finish one.”
What an example of starting, never giving up and finishing.
How you perceive the future charts the course to get you there.
Howard Putnam speaks on leadership, change, transformation, customer service, teams and ethics. He is the former CEO of Southwest Airlines and the first CEO to take a major airline, Braniff International, into, through and out of Chapter 11, getting it flying again in less than two years.
