Analysis originally published on April 1, 2017. It is all the more topical in the year 2024.
The vision of sports that we most often embrace at the agency Codezero is that of a sport primarily oriented towards the quest for sensation, balance, self-fulfillment, and natural environment. It also focuses on non-competition, a sport that is widely open to a related culture where one finds art, creativity, music, design, innovation. It is a sport that unites more than it selects.
We would also like to point out that sport often says the opposite of society. While society demands more tolerance, openness, acceptance of others, less demand, less pressure, less selectivity, competitive sports often go in the opposite direction without anyone objecting, even those who advocate the opposite in civil society. There is no left/right divide in sports.
While this vision is predominant, it is not intended to be exclusive or exclusionary. Certainly, we sometimes cast a critical eye on what we sometimes call the “traditional sports system”, which includes clubs, federations, competitions, but it still retains its raison d’être and virtues. Nevertheless, the pursuit of high-level performance remains, in some respects, appealing and certainly pushes athletes worldwide, regardless of their abilities, to do better and to “surpass” themselves, though this term should be used with caution.
Training four, five, or six times a week, constantly repeating but improving movements, the body that tires but progresses and responds, the satisfaction that ensues, the confidence gained, the opponent who is not necessarily an enemy, often a buddy, the race or the fight, all of this is rewarding, exciting, and offers all athletes, at all levels, life perspectives as long as they are supported in their own progress. Not everyone will be a champion, nor does everyone want to be. For your information, members of Codezero practice mountain biking, trail running, crossfit, skiing, snowboarding, kitesurfing, hay bobsledding, as well as athletics and taekwondo. In short, we are engaged with both worlds…
Going further, reaching one’s goal and for the best, achieving excellence, all this symbolism is put into perspective here by the brilliant director Eliot Raush in this incredibly powerful clip. One can truly speak of the art of storytelling to describe his work.
We also subscribe, how could we not, to the idea of not promoting the illusion of equal opportunity in sports, which is even more of a social fiction than in society. In many disciplines, high-level sports are a matter of hard work, sometimes social environment (family heritage), or geographical environment (sometimes both), and… DNA. DNA.
Let’s not deceive ourselves.
