Losing like a Champion

My journey in motor racing has been nothing short of an emotional rollercoaster. The best drivers start racing as young as seven years old and it’s a brutal climb to the top. To reach the highest levels of motorsport, you have to embody a champion. Flashback to 2019, I was at the peak of my junior karting career. Traveling internationally to compete at the highest level of karting at a mere 14 years old. We travelled throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States, running in the biggest races, with the best competition. Emotional highs bigger than Mt. Everest also brought lows that made me question who I wanted to be. During this period, I began to believe that adversity is the best way to learn and that loss is the best teacher one can have. It was an awakening for me as an athlete and as a person. To glorify a loss was a new concept to me. 

I come from a competitive home, a competitive society. A world in which the goal is to win. Winning round three of the SKUSA Winter Series (NA championships) and falling just short of the series title in February of 2019 was an experience like no other. I was a fourteen-year-old boy who could conquer the world. These feelings, however, fluctuate. Just a month after the most substantial victory of my career, I took part in what I consider one of the worst weekends I have had in competition. I reflected on this: “which series of events did I learn the most from?”

While struggling to find a theme for an online motorsports blog to summarize my terrible weekend, it hit me. Loss is our teacher. It makes us better at what we do., but only if taken the right way. We must find out why we lose and make changes. 

I analysed data graphs and video footage for hours at the racetrack. I questioned myself, the equipment, and the team around me. I asked myself, “Why did I lose? How can I become better?” when attempting to figure out why I had not come away the winning driver I wanted to be. Losing was strangely helping me. It continues to help me. It makes me question what happened and how I can improve. I proceeded to write my blog about the highs and lows of karting. I deduced that short-term losses provide long-term gains if you have the right mindset. In an ultra-competitive world, adversity is the best learning tool. 

I often learned much more from an event when the results were poor.  Moving forward, I would choose points from my weekend, no matter what the results were, and worked to better myself. As humans, young, old, or anywhere in the middle, we want to win. There is always a reason why people lose. My goal is to find this reason and never make the same error twice, therefore, learning from my mistakes. Serena Williams once said, “I don’t like to lose — at anything… Yet I’ve grown most not from victories, but setbacks. If winning is God’s reward, then losing is how he teaches us.”

It is the champion mentality. I take the good from the bad, learn, and improve. In everyday life, loss teaches us all. For example, the first assignment handed into a class may not have resulted in the grade you desire; however, you take the provided feedback and fix your errors. You learned from your mistake and your loss. This mindset will translate to any situation, no matter how microscopic the error is. Adversity exposes weak points. Fix those weak points to become stronger. I will carry this with me throughout my life. This belief occurred to me through sport, yet I will continue to apply it to my everyday actions. Everyone faces hardship, use this to move forward. Look for the positive in life and take it. Take the negative, whether it’s yours or not, and turn it around. Loss is the best teacher.