{"id":5647,"date":"2010-02-17T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=5647"},"modified":"2010-01-19T14:59:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T20:59:48","slug":"agony-of-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/agony-of-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Agony of Defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"1050\" height=\"591\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jKEDD1i4oGk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The triumph of the human spirit&#8230;pfft.\u00a0 More like triteness of the human spirit.\u00a0\u00a0 I can relate more to putting in a modest amount of effort and then not just coming up short, but failing&#8230;catastrophically&#8230;in front of a sizable audience.\u00a0 I think most of us, therefore, are &#8220;Agony of Defeat&#8221; people.<\/p>\n<p>ABC Wide World of Sports interposed various other symbolic clips and stills of the show&#8217;s intro over the course of decades, but they left the footage of &#8220;agony of defeat&#8221; static because the portrayal was so spot-on.\u00a0 So, the initial humiliation had interest compounded for a small lifetime, week after week, until the wretched soul epitomized epic failure.<\/p>\n<p>His name is Vinko Bogataj.\u00a0 He was competing for Yugoslavia in the Ski-flying World Championships in Oberstdorf, West Germany (now Germany) on March 21, 1970 when his third run&#8217;s adjustment for excessive speed turned him into a self destructing cyclone of limbs and personal dignity.\u00a0 He only received a concussion that day, but retired from competition.\u00a0 According to various Internet sources, he transitioned into coaching, painting, and driving a forklift.<\/p>\n<p>A rare blessing from the Cold War is he was unable to endure a televised lifetime of shame from across the Iron Curtain.\u00a0 Imagine his surprise in 1991 during the Wide World of Sports&#8217; 30th anniversary show when he was mobbed by such luminaries as Muhammad Ali who wanted HIS autograph.<\/p>\n<p>Vinko Bogataj, we salute you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The triumph of the human spirit&#8230;pfft.\u00a0 More like triteness of the human spirit.\u00a0\u00a0 I can relate more to putting in a modest amount of effort and then not just coming up short, but failing&#8230;catastrophically&#8230;in front of a sizable audience.\u00a0 I think most of us, therefore, are &#8220;Agony of Defeat&#8221; people.<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/agony-of-defeat\/\">[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1015,1014,1016],"class_list":["post-5647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reference","tag-ski-jumping","tag-skiing","tag-wide-world-of-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-1t5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5647"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5660,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5647\/revisions\/5660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}