新概念英语第二册第九课课文

新概念英语第二册第九课课文

Lesson 9 The sporting spirit

As the Olympic Games approached in 1972, a Japanese pole-vaulter named Konno was training harder than ever before. The reason was that he had been shamed by his failure in the1968 Games. He had hoped to do well then and had worked hard for months to achieve his goal. At the last moment, however, he fell from the pole and was disqualified. The unhappy memory of this disaster still haunted him four years later.

Now, as a member of the Japanese Olympic team, he was truing to make sure that he did not repeat his earlier failure. Every day he would vault over the bar dozens of times until he was exhausted. He was determined that when the Games began, he would be ready for them.

However, fate played a cruel trick on him. Just a few months before the Olympics opened, he broke his ankle while competing in Tokyo. He was rushed to hospital and the doctors told him that it would take at least six weeks for the bone to heal. He was devastated by the news, but he refused to lose heart. Instead, he began to exercise every other part of his body, hoping in this way to keep fit until his ankle had healed.

When the day of the pole-vaulting event arrived, Konno's ankle was still weak, but he decided to compete all the same. As he feared, he did badly in the early stages and was soon trailing behind the other competitors. Then came his first real attempt. He gathered all his strength and sprinted down the runway, planted his

pole firmly in the ground and hurled himself into the air. For a heart-stopping moment, he seemed to be failing again, but somehow he managed to twist his body so that he fell across the bar without knocking it off. The crowd cheered wildly as the judges signalled that the jump was successful.

Konno was encouraged by his success and went on to make two other jumps, each one slightly better than the last. When the competition ended, he found to his amazement that he had won a bronze medal. It was not the gold medal he had hoped for, but it was still an achievement of which he could be proud.

The story of Konno teaches us an important lesson about sport. It is not enough merely to possess great physical ability. To be a true sportsman one must also have courage, determination and, above all, the sporting spirit. The true sportsman does not lose heart when he is defeated. He picks himself up and tries again, even if he is handicapped by injury or illness. He strives to do his best under all circumstances, never forgetting that it is not winning but taking part that counts. This is the sporting spirit, and it is the noblest of all human qualities.