​I had to de­cide be­tween out­right stub­born­ness and be­ing prag­mat­ic. I found my­self in an emo­tion­al vor­tex, ques­tion­ing for the first time (in my sport-lov­ing life–some call it an un­healthy fa­nati­cism, my in­volve­ment in sport and the Olympic move­ment. I want­ed to quit. Call it a day.

​As with al­most every­one, the start of a new year is about res­o­lu­tions, even if many of them don't make it past the end of Jan­u­ary. Some don't even sur­vive past New Year’s Day. Be that as it may, I did the an­nu­al rit­u­al. How­ev­er, 2026 came on the heels of a deeply, per­son­al­ly chal­leng­ing 2025. I had to face a new re­al­i­ty: plan­ning not just to fight back, but to keep fight­ing for­ward.

​I love every as­pect of sport–the good, the bad, and the ug­ly. But there comes a point in your life where cir­cum­stances force you to con­front a cross­roads. The ques­tion wasn't whether it had been worth it, but rather: giv­en the cur­rent sce­nario, is it worth it?

​There are any num­ber of sit­u­a­tions with­in sport where the peo­ple–not the sport it­self–make it an ex­haust­ing, tox­ic, fu­tile ex­pe­ri­ence. It's a nev­er-end­ing marathon 24/7. Peo­ple. It is al­ways the peo­ple.

​So, 2026 start­ed with me at that cross­roads. Then, ei­ther as some may call it, while pray­ing, oth­ers say it's med­i­ta­tion, while some say it's just deep thought. What­ev­er one may choose to call it, two non-sport-re­lat­ed ar­ti­cle no­ti­fi­ca­tions pinged my cell phone. Though fea­tur­ing two dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als, both ar­ti­cles con­tained state­ments that gave me clar­i­ty of thought with re­spect to re­silience, pur­pose, and re­main­ing un­wa­ver­ing. They forced me to fo­cus on some­thing big­ger than my own nar­row thoughts. It be­came crys­tal clear.

​The first was Robert Young, de­sign­er and founder of The Cloth fash­ion house. He said: "So there’s a record of some­body’s hopes, dreams, as­pi­ra­tions for them­selves, for their space. They would em­bed things and in­for­ma­tion…mean­ing­ful to them, and al­so their as­pi­ra­tions for them­selves.” I re­placed fash­ion with sport and re­mind­ed my­self that sport is a record of young peo­ple's hopes, dreams and as­pi­ra­tions for them­selves in their space.

​In an­oth­er ar­ti­cle, artist and vi­su­al arts teacher David Coop­er shared his be­lief that the Car­ni­val-stud­ies move­ment can solve a lot of our prob­lems, es­pe­cial­ly with Car­ni­val be­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try world­wide. For two decades, Coop­er, a vi­su­al arts teacher, kept run­ning in­to the same trou­bling gap. Chil­dren could tell him when Car­ni­val was, which band they want­ed to play with and who was the Road March win­ner the year be­fore. But when he asked them what Car­ni­val was – where it came from, how its el­e­ments worked to­geth­er, its cul­tur­al rel­e­vance to peo­ple – the an­swers were less than sat­is­fac­to­ry. That dis­con­nect is what led Coop­er to cre­ate the Wire­man Ini­tia­tive, an im­mer­sive cul­tur­al-ed­u­ca­tion project and the con­cept of "fete­craft".

​I re­alised it is about far more than just "the game." Again, I re­placed "fash­ion" and "Car­ni­val" with "sport."

​Sport mat­ters. I found my­self an­swer­ing my own ques­tion: Is it worth it? Yes, it was worth it, and it is worth it. The cross­road will still be there, but the doubt and the ques­tion­ing have dis­ap­peared–at least for now, as I hit the dead­line for this first col­umn of 2026.

​Hope­ful­ly, when dark thoughts next at­tempt to con­sume my mind, I will re­mind my­self: Sport mat­ters. Pur­pose mat­ters. Re­silience mat­ters. Per­se­ver­ance mat­ters.