Tony Stark: "Is It Better To Be Feared Or Respected? I Say, Is It Too Much To Ask For Both?"
It was one of those weird things that rattled around my head before competition. I replay the scene from the movie over and over and over. For some reason it calms me. I want the people around me to know that I am here to win, but more than winning, I want them to both fear me and respect me; but mainly fear me. I mean, I live in fear, so why not them too?
I lined up at the start of the race with all the elite athletes. The morning air had a chill and it was incredibly still. A morning that seemed to start so quietly, before dawn and just so peaceful. By the time I got to the start line I was shivering in my trisuit, trying to enjoy the sunrise over the lake. Everyone seemed relaxed compared to me. A broad, older man stood next to me, calm as you like. He seemed very distant; just staring across the water before us, maybe enjoying the sunrise over the mirror-smooth water. Next to him is a tall, gangly man with chiselled cheeks, peroxide blonde hair and a blonde moustache. He returned my inquisitive look with a sneer.
"Kid, you're out of your depth. You should be with the juniors."
Not fair, but not wrong. Not sensing a whole lot of fear from him. Respect? Probably not.
Shoulder to shoulder with him is another tall, broad man who leaned over and spoke. He'd got a five o'clock shadow at nearly 7am.
"You're facking joking if you think you're starting here. Fack the fack off, shitbag."
He looked down on me, also sneering. I double side-eye and offer a fresh cup of disdain.
"Cant. Facking cant." He grumbled on.
If that was meant to be disheartening, it wasn't. I went from preoccupied to vaguely frightened to intensely focused. Now I needed to beat both of them, and by extension, beat them all. I watched the iron red mist roll in across the lake and burn my flesh. These competitors are exactly the same people who'd spent years taunting and humiliating me. Now I was ready. This is war. They would learn to fear me, and by extension, respect a winner.
At the start of the race all competitors lined up to swim to the first turn. Once at the first turn, the swimmers compressed around the marker buoy, then we headed to the next turn, then finally a swim-sprint to the shore. The competition is designed to be tough, but by design it's meant to be safe. Competitors are purposely separated out from each other to credit them with individual success.
I made it to the top of the apex of swimmers at the first turn. With the water churning, it was impossible for me to know who was who. However, sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes swimmers might get a foot, or hand, to the body or face. However, I found blows from hands and feet raining in. I took a foot to the face. Someone punched me in the hip. Water churned around me as swimmers closed in. The race organisers ensure that athletes follow the rules, but in the water this got a little tricky. Canoeists followed the swimmers around, looking for fair conduct and good sportsmanship, but they needed to be sure they'd witnessed misconduct.
By the second turn the swimmers had stretched out. With no bunching, they all kept a professional distance. At the end of the swim, the lead athletes emerged, and as expected, the favourites chased each other up the shore to the first transition.
I was fifteenth by the time he found the shore. As I made my transition, the lead cyclists had left. My bike was on its side. Someone had flipped it.
This made my blood burn, turning my focused anger into pure, terrifying rage. I picked his bike up and stormed out of the transition area, then picked a big gear and turned the pain up - that welcomed embrace of burning, searing pain. I burned my legs with lactic acid. My lungs turned water vapour into white hot steam. It took a few minutes for me to accelerate to top speed, but once I got the bike under me the world went into warp drive. I'm now at maximum suffering and this, at my core, is my essence.
At the first climb I had made up five places. I'd closed on the lead racers as they went from the peak of the hill above the town. When the road turned toward Main Street, a familiar squeal of carbon fibre brakes echoed into the town as riders tried to control their descent. The crowds started to cheer their approach. In the alcoves of the slalom sections people stood from their tables and chairs to watch the riders cycle past. People tried to squint at the little lycra dots making their way down the side of the hill. One dot seemed to silently fall off the side of the hill.
Power is nothing without control. Maximum power requires total control. It is true that the greater the control, the greater the power. Years of BMX racing gave me grace and poise on the bike that was unmatched in the field of cyclists I raced against. In a single descent I blitzed past the other riders going from tenth to first. As they feathered their brakes and went gently into corners, I went past them like they were stationary. Instead of slowing, I would accelerate.
I hit the long, graduated curve before Main Street a little over 60 miles per hour. Most of the spectators were putting down their glasses of wine and finishing their mouthful of food in the safe areas between the chicanes.
I slammed the bike over and hooked both wheels into the smooth kerbs on the side of the road. I kinda hoped this would have scrubbed some speed but instead I catapulted around, increasing my speed. I railed around the curve and straightened up to take the first road hump. Any mistake would mean a trip to the hospital. Or worse. I needed to bunny hop the bike well in advance of the road hump, graze it with the wheels and hope that I'd land on the other side in time to repeat the process. Too high and the bike would either drift away from me and I'd hit a barrier. Too low and the bike would ricochet off into the barriers. To quote Mortal Kombat - Fatality.
I made it look effortless. There wasn't even a slap from the chain as the bike landed. Buttery-clean. So clean. In fact, I was so fast that people didn't start cheering until the second place rider came past, clanging and clattering over the speed bumps and wobbling past the straw bales - their cacophony of poor technique made the audience assume that he was leading the race. The timing gantry told another story, but no one seemed to care enough to look up. As the riders went past, people sat back down and continued their lunch trying to attract the wait-staff to order another bottle of wine.
I completed the cycle section so fast that the race martials managing the transition area had drifted away from their position to tell me where to go. Thankfully I'd prepared in advance so it meant I knew where I needed to be. My timing bib sent a message to the timing gate and beeped to reassure me that I was still being recorded even if no one was there to point me in the right direction. As I cycled in, I rode my bike across a line of clean towels, fresh socks and carefully laid-out shoes.
I think it wasn't until my third lap did anyone realise how far in the lead I was. Two competitors got to the transition area and saw me running past, shouting to the organisers that someone had cheated. No one could be that far in front.
I finished in a course record time. Later that day I was told that Mom and Alexandra both cheered me as I passed them on the finish line, but I saw nothing except the tape. When most athletes win from an unassailable margin, they slow, raise their hands and accept the congratulations of the crowd. Not me. I sprinted the last 100 yards. Someone mentioned if this wasn't my sport of choice, I should take up sprinting.
The photo of my gritted determination at the finish line made the local newspaper, then some fitness magazines. Later the next day it made national news and unknown to everyone it would go internationally viral, for very different reasons. People zoomed in on that expression. People tried to explain what they could never understand, except that this was 'winning'. To me, the end of the race meant the end of the pain. I turned my exhaustion into an emotional release. People thought perhaps I was crying tears of joy, but I just wanted the pain to continue.
I ran past both Mom and Alexandra who were in the VIP area, roaring me on as I crossed the finish line then squealing with joy, hugging each other with jubilation.
Heather threw her arms around Alexandra and cried. She watched her boy, her own son, win at something he'd trained so hard for. Morning after morning she remembered getting up only to find him already out training, and the look of tiredness as he came in at night, utterly exhausted. She thought back on all those big and little moments that had led to this. His early days of BMX, his sadness when he got back from competing in the Olympics, and then finding a new purpose in competing once again. She took the moment in Alex's arms and wondered if her son's beautiful body would once again ruin her later that night. If not, perhaps Alex might. She hugged Alexandra a little tighter.
Whiteleaf Insurance got their perfect publicity photo that would go on to become a million dollar moment. Alexandra felt a sense of justification that her organisation received priceless advertising and personal joy as her prodigy crossed the finish line.
Alexandra's emotions swirled around her as she lost herself in Heather's embrace. Firstly, she was doing something away from the insurance campus her and Aldos created together. This was her thing. She had invested heavily, and as shocking as it was to allow the word into her vernacular - gambled - on an unknown. The investment had been a phenomenal return above budget. Alexandra had also gambled on Andy emotionally too. While running a national insurance company with Aldos she'd stopped allowing herself to get feelings for people, and now Andy had reawakened something that had been dormant for too long and she savoured returning to. It was both vindication and reward so she'd fight to keep it going for as long as she could.
Andy once again took advantage of a free post-race massage and a shower. He'd changed into his Whiteleaf sponsored clothing as second to fifth raced across the finish line. They'd been lost in racing each other for what they assumed was first place, so as each crossed the line and looked at the timing gantry, they went from elation to despair. To make matters worse, as they passed by the banks of photographers at the finish, Andy stood by the finish line, arms folded, staring down each of them.
The top three competitors lined up on the podium, with Andy taking top spot. Despite the race only just finishing for the rest of the competitors, Andy looks refreshed, calm and focused. Happy would be too strong a word for him standing in first place. Andy looked down at the crowds of people below him like a hawk circling for a meal.
Once off the podium the press photos ended and the sponsorship photos started. This had been organised by two people from the Whiteleaf marketing department, Alexandra and supported by Heather. Alexandra organised photos of Andy with his winners medal, trophy and surprisingly some of the other competitors. Everyone noticed Andy getting irked when he was asked to take more photos with the other male competitors he'd just beaten but after a quiet word from Heather, he calmed down and started to enjoy photos with the junior competitors, which technically Andy still was eligible for.
With the formal sponsored photos completed, the photographer looked for some reportage style content and encouraged Alexandra and Heather onto the top step and they wrapped themselves around Andy. Andy stood like a rock, arms folded with legs like iron. Both Heather and Alexandra felt their emotions stir as the photographer asked them to drape a little more suggestively while failing to get Andy to relax and look happy. Both of them felt a jolt of desire as they wrapped themselves around Andy. There's a biological set of feelings that come with touching a body at the peak of physical perfection. Andy imbued raw energy. As both women touched his torso, they felt a spike of electricity conducted through his body.
Recent memories have a way of bubbling up to the surface when you least expect them.
Both of the women on Andy's arms were there for very different reasons, and both had reason to feel very differently about Andy's success. As the photographer moved them through various poses, he asked them to look at Andy. Andy gazed bleakly at the camera wishing for his life to end. They then looked across at each other, and both saw that they had the same expression. Lust. It was so extraordinary that the both lingered a look into each other's eyes longer than both of them would have wanted. Both intimately knew the expression the other woman held and both telegraphed their feelings to each other. Lust. Not parental joy or organisational success, but lust. Female intuition both told the answer to the question neither one of them would ask. He fucked you. You fucked him. Fuck. You know I know.
They both carefully edged away from Andy and each other. The photographer felt that he'd got enough and turned to look into the camera display. Alexandra looked around, trying to assess if anyone had seen her emotional betrayal. Heather couldn't look anyone in the eye, and looked down at her world crumbling around her feet. Andy looked at the photographer and realised he was distracted enough to slip away. He did a neat step backwards and dropped off the dias, landing effortlessly onto his toes. He then stomped off to find his stuff, and possibly some free food laid on for the competitors, before organising an exit to somewhere less crowded.
