Anybody who has ever been at a youth sporting event medal ceremony knows they can be longer than the event. With that in mind, it’s a good thing they don’t have participation medals at the Olympics. Sort of.

There were over 11,000 athletes at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. As it was, there were over 900 medals awarded in 306 events. Since there were several multiple medal winners that means that quite fewer than 1% of the athletes who participated in the games went home with an award.

All those participants in all those events and the only ones who stood on a podium and had gold, silver, or bronze draped over them were those who finished first, second, or third in their particular endeavor. And that’s the way it is. Only the top three contestants are awarded medals. Plus another twenty-one.

The Pierre de Coubertin Medal is a special award given to those who exemplify the true spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympics. Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee and introduced the modern games to the world. He felt the games were an opportunity to promote peace, unite people around the world, and celebrate the struggle of competition.

How special is this special award. Saturday it was awarded for only the eighteenth time. Maybe you saw when long distance runners Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand and American Abbey D’Agostino got tripped up during the women’s 5,000 meter preliminary event. Hamblin went down and D’Agostino stopped and urged her to get up to finish the race. They began running again and that’s when D’Agostino went down and it was Hamblin’s turn to stay with her.

The two women became the 20^th and 21^st people to have received the award which has been presented eighteen times since its introduction in 1964.

Even though neither was expected to medal in the event, both left Brazil with the ultimate participation award. Hamblin said of the incident, “You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose what you do about it.”  Words more precious than gold.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?