Marshall Ramsey

I’ve enjoyed the Olympics this year. Once again, they celebrate the human spirit and provide the inspiration we desperately need right now. I know I could use some inspiration. I’m a 56-year-old exhausted man who has huge dreams and wants to live his life to the fullest. So while know I will never be an Olympian (although Turkey’s Gen-X shooter Yusuf Dikeç gives me hope), I can’t help be inspired. Here’s why:

1. Are you struggling with mental health challenges? Look no further than the G.O.A.T. herself, Simone Biles. Watching her gravity defying performances are stunning. Watching her overcome the twisties, which could have caused her to get really hurt or worse and caused her to pull out of the Olympics three years ago, is inspirational. She got the help she needed and has done the work.

Mental health is health.

1. Do you have a physical comeback? Well, check out Sunisa Lee, who in 2023 thought she’d never perform again because of an unspecified rare kidney disease. She fought her back to the medal stand. If they gave a medal for resilience, she’d get the gold.

Be 100% of what you can be.

1. Do you think one person doesn’t matter? Check out Stephen Nedoroscik, the pommel horse king, who won a couple of bronzes — and got the American team back on the medal stand after a 16-year-drought. Like Clark Kent, he whipped off his glasses and saved the day.

One person makes a difference.

1. Need a role model on how to be a champion? Check out Katie Ledecky . Not only has she got a wall full of medals, she has done it with quiet grace and hard work. She has taken her talent to another level. Even her competitors like her. She likes them, too — and then leaves them in her wake.

Let your work do your talking.

And I’ve just scratched the surface. Sport is a laboratory for humanity. You see the best of us. And you see the worst of us. You can learn a lot from what Jim McKay used to say, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

Now back to the games.

As the wheelchair stopped in the sand, the old soldier looked out at the calm surf. It was just him, his great grandson, and his memories. He had seen this surf before — but the last time, it was much angrier. A lone gull broke the silence as tears filled his eyes. The sweet salt air was replaced with the smell of vomit, seawater, blood and cordite. Explosions and screams filled his head. Fear froze his limbs. Death was ahead of him — and behind him. Blood and entrails splattered his face and bullets wizzed over his head. There was no cover. It was move forward or die on this Godforsaken beach. The looming rise ahead of him twinkled as machine guns raked every inch of the sand he and his brothers were trying to grab. More screams filled his head. Courage, born out of a deep survival instinct (mixed with training), kicked in. A fighter plane roared down the beach, spraying the hillside with bullets, giving them a brief moment to pull them out the riptide of death. He and his men laid explosives to clear a path through the mines. BOOM! This time the explosion was a gift. He picked himself off the sand and started to stumble forward down the path it had cleared. The man to his right’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brains but he couldn’t think about it the carnage. There would be years to work that out. Now the bunker on the top the hill was his objective. Ducking more bullets, he charged with his rifle prepared to kill. Three grenades from his belt went into the machine gun nest, extinguishing the threat. He pulled his knife and lunged it into the heart of the sole surviving German. He heard the dying man’s life slip out of his lungs with a bloody gurgle. A primal scream woke him from his flashback.

“Grandpa Buck, you OK?”

The old man blinked and was brought back to 2024. Confined to his wheelchair for nearly a decade, he stood proudly on Omaha Beach. This time, he knew he couldn’t cheat death. Time was doing what the Germans could never do. Looking around him, he saw the ghosts of the men who had died on June 6, 1944 running toward him on the beach. Soon, he’d be one of them. He’d concur death’s bluff soon enough. Today, though, he’d enjoy the Freedom that his moment in Hell had given the world.