On a day of rough defeat, there’s only one balm: Family

PARIS – You lose a fencing bout you think you could have won. Maybe should have won. You feel heartbreak and frustration at

this almost-there 15-13 Olympic defeat.

You cry in corridors where people can’t see you. You feel the world is unbearable but perhaps there’s just one thing which could make it tolerable.

The embrace of family.

This is what foil fencer Amita Berthier, 23, gets at the Grand Palais. Her sisters Aarya, 25, and Aishwarya, 33, smother her with kisses. They haven’t seen her in Paris till this moment. Her brother Ashok, 33, stands close by. Her mother Uma, “dying” during the bout, is hovering. Sport is a rough storm at sea, family is the calm after.

Referees judge, media critiques, but family reassures. On the diving board at the 1984 Olympics, scared during his last dive, the legendary Greg Louganis consoled himself with a single, powerful thought. “I stood there and told myself that no matter what I do here, my mother will still love me. That thought gives you a lot of strength.”

The exquisite Grand Palais in Paris with its towering glass dome is the perfect venue for fencing, which is the intersection of sport and art. One can almost imagine the sword-fighting Four Musketeers casually engaging rivals on the wide staircases. The crowd is vast and noisy yet athletes live in worlds of silence and solitariness. No one can fight for them and yet on July 27 epee fencer Kiria Tikanah knew her parents, older brother and cousin were there in the stands.

In a lonely world, she says, “you are not all alone”.

At every stadium, in every sport, athletes are offering public thanks. For dads who rise for 5.30am practices. For mothers whose shoulders are always available. For siblings who’ve come just to sit, wince, cry, pray and feel proud. “What Amita is feeling, we feel,” says Aarya.

Elsewhere, Zeng Zhiying, the 58-year-old Chilean table tennis player, tells the world, “My husband, my sons, everyone I love and care about were there shouting my name. I feel so content.” Amid the din of strangers in a foreign land it’s something to hear the comforting sound of kin.

When this writer spoke to Amita after her bout, her tears just about held on a leash of control, she lamented a loss where she trailed 2-6, led 12-9, and lost 15-13. You could see all she wanted was family, to lean on them, to find normality, relief and a love absent of judgment. Or what Max Maeder’s father Valentin refers to as a safe space.

“My family knows me better than anyone else,” says Amita. “They are the ones that know what I go through every day. My mental struggles, my physical struggles, day in, day out, how I’m training, how I’m working, how I’m eating, how I’m resting.”

At the 1992 Olympics, when 400m runner Derek Redmond’s hamstring snapped and he painfully hobbled on, determined to finish, the improbable occurred. His father Jim leapt from the stands onto the track, pushed aside security and helped his son to the line. One person plays but sport is an adventure taken together.

“Having a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to helps a lot,” explains Amita. “Because when you keep things in, sometimes you could just stack up and then you could just explode. So having my mum, my sisters and my brother there definitely helps because sometimes I feel more comfortable telling one sibling something than the other.

“Also this qualification year I had a lot of personal struggles, so my family knew what I was going through. Qualifying really meant a lot to me because I wasn’t sure if I was going to qualify or not, and then I did. So having them there, assuring me that I’ll be fine whether I qualify or not, helped a lot.”

And if all this is moving, then we can’t forget that family at a Games is a privilege. Most athletes scan the stands and there are no voices to hold on to. Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of the Bengaluru-based GoSports Foundation, which supports athletes, says: “Some parents don’t even have the dream that they can travel and their kids don’t bring it up. Because funding might not be available to them.”

An Indian journalist tells me about a steeplechaser whose parents are farmers from a drought-prone region and rarely venture to the big city. In the biography section for Tachlowini Gabriyesos of the Refugee Olympic Team it states that he fled Eritrea at 12 with a 13-year-old friend. There is no mention of his parents.

And so, later, as Amita leans against the steel scaffolding of the stands, her coach trying to lift her spirits, her mother standing like a sentry, her aunt in attendance, you have to think that even on this day of cruel defeat she is so lucky.

Chances in sport, they come and go. But family stays.