The 0.03-Second Margin
The importance of choosing games where there can be multiple winners
2025-05-20 by Luca Dellanna
In the 2024 Olympics, 0.005 seconds separated the gold and silver medalists of the 100-meter men’s. The bronze medalist arrived 0.02 seconds later. Imagine this: you could spend a lifetime training and making the most extreme sacrifices, run 0.03 seconds slower than the fastest man, and still win nothing.
Games in which there can be only one winner are cruel, for it doesn’t matter how talented you are, how long you train, and how much you sacrifice; as long as someone else does the same, it becomes a coin toss, and you might be left with nothing.
The lesson? Choose games where there can be multiple winners. This is a more important consideration than how good your strategy is or how determined you are; for in a game where there can only be one winner, these might not matter at all.
