At its best, sport gives people the chance to fulfil their potential, to scale heights that most of us can only dream about and, sometimes, to push out the boundaries of human attainment.

Two sportsmen finished chapters in their lives yesterday, exemplifying the best in their field and doing something positive to restore the public's faith in the good that sport can accomplish.

The first, Shaun Goater played what will almost certainly be his last game for Manchester City, where he has spent five highly successful years as a professional footballer.

The second, Alan Paris, became the first Bermudian to complete a single-handed circumnavigation of the globe when he finished the Around Alone Race in Newport, Rhode Island.

Two different men and two different accomplishments, and yet their achievements required similar personal traits. Shaun Goater plays a team sport at a level that few Bermudians have attained as a soccer striker in the English Premiership, arguably the best football league in the world.

Alan Paris has completed what is one of the ultimate individual accomplishments by sailing alone around the world. And yet Shaun Goater would not be where he is today without extraordinarily high levels of personal skill and discipline. And Alan Paris could not accomplish his feat without a close knit support team of family and friends. Both have faced adversity.

Shaun Goater's skill as a striker has never received the recognition it deserves. He toiled in the lower reaches of the English Football League before getting his chance to shine in the Premiership. Having reached that point, he has had trouble keeping his spot, in spite of the fact that he was, and is, among the goal scoring leaders. Fancier and more famous players have been brought in and have achieved less than him.

Alan Paris has had his share of equipment problems and whale strikes while experiencing the frustration of being at the back of the fleet. Yet, as reported on the Around Alone website, "Of all the competitors Paris has spent by far the longest time at sea and he has done so with an unwavering sense of humour", which in turn has made him one of the most popular sailors in the fleet.

The same can be said of Shaun Goater. His extraordinary popularity in Manchester is due in part to his skill and ability and in part because he has deported himself with remarkable grace and professionalism in good and bad times.

"Role model" is a heavily overused phrase today, but Shaun Goater and Alan Paris epitomise its real meaning. They are dedicated, selfless men whose positive outlook should be an inspiration to all of us.

Shaun Goater will almost certainly go on to another club and, it is to be hoped, will achieve further fame and success. Alan Paris will return to Bermuda to take up the reins of the resurgent Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

Both of these relatively young men have completed exciting and extraordinary chapters, and they now face the possibility of never scaling the same heights in their lives again. How they deal with that, and to what uses they put their accomplishments through the rest of their lives will be the challenge for them now.

But given the content of the characters of these two men, it is hard to imagine that Bermuda will not continue to benefit from them.