‘Winning Is Not Everything’

The day after costing his team a medal in his country’s national sport, he received a bottle of wine in thanks.

His embassy in Canada began receiving appreciation too -- several bouquets of flowers, dozens of letters and hundreds of e-mails.

Then a Canadian travel company offered a week’s stay at a luxury hotel in Banff. Be our guest. See the Canadian Rockies. Bring your family too.

Bjornar Hakensmoen still doesn’t get it.

“I was just standing there, and this skier had broken her pole,” the Norwegian cross-country coach said. “So I gave her one. That is the whole story.”

This is what the Olympics can be on their best days. This little story. This big reaction. This outpouring of humanity between countries that aren’t necessarily ours, in a sport we don’t really care about, at a Winter Games where most American emotion is spent either chiding a snowboarder for showboating, a skier for flopping or simply wondering what happened to all of our medals.

Every American should hear this story too.

This was the scene: Canadian cross-country skier Sara Renner was in the third lap of a six-lap sprint relay. The Canadians were favored and she was leading.

Then her ski pole snapped.

That’s like losing your bat in baseball, your stick in hockey.

Crippled now, Renner soldiered on, but watched the Finn ski by. Then the Swede. Then the Norwegian passed too, and so there, down the course, ahead of her in the snow, went the gold, silver and bronze medals.

“I was flapping around, watching everyone pass me,” she said.

That’s when she was helped by her “mystery man,” as she called him.

She didn’t know Hakensmoen. He was just another person standing along the course.

A few seconds earlier, he had yelled encouragement to his skier. This is his last year as coach of the Norwegian Olympic team. Every medal means something to him. And Norway was on the medal bubble in an event that their country embraces.

But when he saw a competitor missing a pole, Hakensmoen didn’t rate her nationality against what it meant for Norway. He held out his pole. She took it.

It was seven inches longer than Renner’s normal one, but that didn’t matter. It got Canada back in the race. It allowed her to catch up, so when she completed her leg, Canada was 2.5 seconds behind the leader.

Cut to the finish line: Canada finished second, narrowly edged out by the Swedes. Naturally, everyone wondered about the broken ski pole and what might have been. Others noticed something else, though.

Norway had finished fourth.

By helping heavyweight Canada, the coach hurt his team. He cost it a medal. You can fill in the comparison. Would the Yankees ever help the Red Sox, if they could? Or the Florida football team help Florida State in the middle of a game?

“Nobody in Norway has said anything bad to me,” Hakensmoen said. “They expect me to do that. Yes, cross-country is very big in Norway. But winning is not everything.

“If you win, but don’t help somebody when you should have, what win is that? I was just helping a girl in big trouble.

“The equipment shouldn’t determine the winner. The heart and talent should determine the winner. That’s my opinion, anyway. Hopefully, it’s something other guys will think of next time.”

The bottle of wine, by the way, came from Renner. Hakensmoen hasn’t opened it yet.

“I will do that when I go home and think back on these Olympic Games with my wife,” he said.

Sometimes, nice guys finish fourth.