It is said that physical activity is, to a large extent, a recreation of war. Individual and group sports, at the very least, involve an internal conflict between the mind and the heart. The great difference that separates this simulation from the confrontation that a football match or a race may imply is that, in most cases, we are all still alive regardless of the result.

On the asphalt, after a PR, we say that “we give it our all.” And even though we are left empty of energy and short of legs, we return home with our hearts full of a new experience to tell. We won the battle with our heads and, during that time, our world revolved around stopping the clock faster. The same happens with the fan in the stands, who in those 90 turns of the clock only sees why the ball goes into the rival goal. And the same goes for those who enjoy swimming, bouncing the ball against the ground or those who enjoy the roar of the engines. Sport is our exaggerated way of giving our all without losing more than kilos, seconds and drops of sweat. It is the place where we forget for a while that there is a pandemic, that our hearts are broken or that the city has a broken soul.

That is why today we turn to our passion to remind us of the good things we have in our hearts, to build bridges that unite us and, above all, to give us hope. That is why I have come to remember some examples of how sport in turbulent times is capable of even saving our lives.

Football breaks chains

Kidnapping was one of the biggest scourges that the country has suffered in recent decades. Thousands of Colombians were deprived of their freedom and, in the best cases, connected to reality through a radio that reported the news and football matches.

It doesn't take much imagination to hear that during Colombian national team matches, soldiers and guerrillas turned off their rifles to watch the tricolor play. The confrontation inside a stadium became a truce in the jungle. Likewise, in the cells, victims and perpetrators gambled every Sunday on cleaning pots or some "comfort" in light of the result of a DIM-Nacional, Millonarios-Santa Fe or América-Cali game. The ball rolling through a radio broadcast was freedom in the middle of confinement.

Lifesaving cycling

Gino Bartali has a privileged place in the history of Italian cycling; and any student of the crankset will have some reference to this athlete who raised his arms in two Tour de France and three Giro d'Italia. Despite this great track record, one could hastily say that he was born in the wrong era, as his professional activity was interrupted by the Second World War; an event that deprived history of seeing Bartali win more trophies on the roads.

This classic cycling legend is credited with having freed strong political tensions in his country on 14 July 1948 by winning the Tour de France stage in epic fashion. A snowy day, which required his iron will, allowed him to reach the finish line first, cut around 20 minutes off the leader and put on the yellow jersey. In his own words, “that day he brought a smile back” to Italy.

But his greatest feat was not in the limelight of the big races. Years later it was discovered that Gino Bartali took advantage of his fame on the roads of Italy, which allowed him to pass through military checkpoints without being searched, to smuggle Jewish passports, which were falsified by communities of monks, on the back of his bicycle. It is estimated that his work saved the lives of dozens of people who were destined to end up in German concentration camps.

Individual sports do not exist

Finally, I want to go back home, to the personal experience of someone who practices a sport like triathlon. A discipline that on paper is called “individual” but that has little or nothing to do with that.

Riding a bike, jogging or swimming, I have experienced what it means to receive a friendly wheel that takes you to the port, I have felt a hand crossed with a granola in its grasp to give me one more life or I have let myself be pushed by the battle cry of a good friend who reminds me that the legs are driven by the heart.

Individual sport has shown me the harshest side of war and my limitations. But it has also allowed me to see the value of friendship, solidarity and empathy. There, where we recreate conflict, we also simulate life. And it is a place so alive and so immense that it teaches us about love, overcoming and hope.

That sport, art or the most sublime passions do not always save lives.

Cristian Marín-Alternating Current.