Reading about Tom Brady’s return to the football arena, one wonders how it is possible that a Champion of over forty years really thinks he can continue to maintain this high standard. The majority has already stopped for many years but he wants to continue. We have to accept this life choice, existential, without putting labels on him like highlander, narcissist and so on. Everyone is much more than what he appears in public and probably Tom Brady satisfies his deep needs that are not easy for us to understand but that exist for him.
The concept to be developed is that there is not the one dimensional person, in this the Champion but the person with the characteristics of the champion or who competes as a champion. This idea is analogous to the concept of disability, we do not say “he is a disabled person” but “a person with a disability, a child with Down syndrome”.
Amartya Sen repeats the same when he explains that there have never been men and women who could be traced back to a single cultural, political or religious affiliation, “the same person can be, without the slightest contradiction, of American citizenship, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, Christian, progressive, woman, vegetarian, marathon runner, historian, teacher, novelist, feminist, heterosexual, supporter of gay and lesbian rights, lover of theater, militant environmentalist, tennis enthusiast”.
The existential concept is that everyone is worth more than the activity with which they are habitually identified, and that recognition of this status should provide a complex and articulate view of the athlete himself in relation to it.
