Sports Day

The Long Straight

I was seventeen years old on my final sports day at secondary school, and no one had me down as a favourite.

Not for anything, anyway.

By then, everyone knew roughly where they stood. The sprinters had their reputations. The distance runners theirs. The stars had been identified years earlier, their lanes almost pre-allocated in people’s minds long before anyone stepped onto the track.

I wasn’t one of them.

I had always been an all-rounder. Useful. Reliable. Present. I played football, basketball, hockey, table tennis. I turned up. I trained. I competed. I contributed. I was rarely the weak link, but I was never the headline act either. If you were picking a team, I’d be chosen—but not first.

I had never been the fastest boy in the school.

Not once.

So when sports day arrived, no one was watching me warm up. No one was tracking my times. No one was whispering my name. And that, it turns out, was my advantage.

I didn’t enter the 100 metres. I knew better. Raw speed had never been my thing. That race belonged to the explosive starters, the ones who could conjure power out of nothing in ten seconds flat. I respected that. I didn’t resent it. I just accepted that it wasn’t where I belonged.

Instead, I looked to the longer races.

The 400 metres is a strange event. Too long to sprint mindlessly, too short to pace gently. It’s uncomfortable. It exposes you. It punishes ego. The first 200 metres invite you to go too fast. The last 100 metres ask you who you really are.

I liked that.

I had quietly carved out a niche there over time—not through talent, but through tolerance. I could suffer. I could hold form when others tightened. I had learnt, across years of team sports, how to keep moving when your body asks you to stop.

When the gun went for the 400 metres, I didn’t fly out of the blocks.