‘SILVER'S for losers'.

The crass billboard messages splashed across Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics hardly endeared America to the rest of the world.

It was commercialisation gone crazy - a win-at-all-costs mentality that said much about the host nation and nothing about the event.

Given the principles on which the Games were built, modern day founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin would have turned in his grave.

And he might have done likewise had he witnessed the sniping which runner Jay Donawa had to endure during Tuesday's Marathon Derby.

A six-time runner-up, Donawa was forced to settle for second for a seventh successive year - which, in the eyes of some roadside observers, made him a ‘loser'.

Really!

Of 439 who started the race, 437 would have been delirious with second place. Indeed, most of those who wearily finished the 13.2 mile trek from Somerset to Devonshire considered themselves winners anyway.

To have finished runner -up in Bermuda's most torturous event for a seventh straight year was a monumental victory in itself.

Understandably, Donawa was hurt by the comments and his immediate reaction was to call it quits, announcing to the media that he'd run his last local race.

Somehow we think he'll change his mind - once he realises, like the rest of us, that Tuesday's heckling came from an insignificant minority, most of whom would have struggled to waddle from one side of the road to the other.

Clearly, none of those with the smartass remarks had ever completed the race themselves or had any notion of what is required to run the course at Donawa's pace - the months of preparation, the sacrifice and the physical pain of pounding the roads day after day.

Everybody who did run the race and just about everybody else who watched recognises Jay for what he is - a class act, whose gutsy performances over the last decade have become part of Marathon Derby folklore.

He's never savoured victory, but in seven straight years nobody, bar one, has managed to beat him. Nothing shabby about that. In fact, it's downright amazing.

At 32, Donawa is far from washed up. He's got plenty of good years ahead and given his talent and commitment to training, there's no reason to believe he still can't become a Derby champion.

But no matter what, he'll never be a ‘loser'.

* * * *

AN hour or so before Donawa crossed the line, teenager Khamari Greaves made his mark in the Sinclair Packwood Memorial Race - an impressive win for one so young, and another sign of cycling's growing popularity.

But if Bermuda Bicycle Association want their sport to continue to prosper, they might want to take a close look at their priorities.

Several hours after the finish, nobody within the BBA had compiled the official results.

Apparently a post-race party was far more important.

As such, none of the media, this paper included, were able to publish times or even finishing order.

Those who competed and those who lined the entire route to offer their support were non the wiser a day later as to who finished where.

Wasn't this supposed to be one of the showpiece events on the cycling calendar?

If the BBA couldn't care less about publicity, perhaps their sponsors, supporters and for that matter the media, might take a similar attitude.

- ADRIAN ROBSON