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The worst place to finish: Fourth! 

August 8, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Keith Schell

In the Olympics, as in all other athletic competitions, finishing in fourth place sucks!It really does!

Having been a runner-up, a second runner-up, or usually worse in many past school athletic competitions, I can totally sympathize with the poor schmuck who ends up out of the money, so to speak, in fourth place.

For Olympians, you work all your life to achieve your athletic goal. In fact, because the competition is so close nowadays, with some finals being decided by hundredths of a second, many Olympic athletes say their goal is just to get on the podium, not to get a gold medal. Get on the podium first and foremost, and the rest will sort itself out.

You come so close to finishing on the podium you can taste it, but you don’t quite make it. You end up out of the medals by just a hair. The First, Second and Third place athletes all get a shiny medal to go home with and a personal podium moment of glory on international television for all the World to see.

But nobody ever remembers the athlete who finishes in fourth place. That would stick in my craw for a long time afterwards, especially if you suspect that someone who finished just ahead of you on the podium might have had a little state-sponsored illegal medical help to rob you of your once-in-a-lifetime moment on world television (No names need to be mentioned. You know who they are).  

The way I see it, it’s almost better to finish dead last than to finish in fourth. At least that way you won’t torture yourself for the next four years wondering if there was anything you could have done better or differently to have gotten you into the top three spots.

Off the podium by a fraction of a second! Could I have touched the pool wall just a little bit quicker, could I have stuck my nose out just a little bit further at the end of the race to break the finish plane sooner, could I have done this or done that just a little bit better?

AARRGGH!

You don’t get a medal of any kind for fourth place.

But that does not mean you go home empty-handed.

We all hear about the Olympians who win gold, silver, and bronze medals. But what about the athletes that come in fourth and fifth? What do they get for their near miss?

Diplomas.

They call them Diplomas, but I guess you could more accurately call them paper certificates.

Since 1948, athletes who place 4th, 5th, and 6th receive a personally inscribed, autopen-signed, formal Olympic diploma from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and in 1981 diplomas for seventh- and eighth-place finishers were also added. Better than nothing, I suppose.

While commonly known simply as ‘Olympic Diplomas’, they are known in some Olympic circles, but hardly accurately, as ’Victory Diplomas’. They are approximately the size of A4 paper (8 ¼ x 11 ¾), and come with the seal of the IOC. Most athletes say they have kept them, though a small number of athletes who lose out in the competitions sometimes do not keep them and give them away to relatives, friends, or others.

But things may be slowly changing. Most modern athletic competitions don’t hand out medals for fourth place, but apparently there has been talk in some sporting circles about doing so these days. If they do, the fourth-place medal would probably be some kind of a blue or gray colour (a not-so-shiny silver, a kind of dull pewter).

Obviously, they wouldn’t have the lustre of the first three medals, but they would help take away a little of the sting of losing a top three spot. Of course, this could be the start of a slippery slope. If you get a medal for fourth place, why not fifth? Where is the cut-off? You don’t want it to end up being an ‘everybody gets a medal day’ like some modern day public school athletic meet where nobody gets their feelings hurt for finishing last.   

When you really think about the bigger picture, being fourth in the entire world at your chosen sport is actually very respectable, even though it will probably never get you on the front of a Wheaties box.

So you keep on plugging away at your chosen sport and hope that in another four years’ time you get another shot to be on the Olympic podium for all the world to see.

Good luck, number four.

I’m rooting for you!     

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