There has been a discussion on an Indianapolis 500 Facebook group page which I am a member of, about whether or not it is right for Helio Castroneves to try and go for a fifth Indy 500 victory. In winning his fourth Indy 500 this year, he joins a club which only has AJ Foyt, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr., and now himself.
As this is a matter of not much consequence beyond the myth and story of the race itself, I think that it serves as a very good reminder of the power of stories. I personally think that all records are there to be broken and that anyone who competes and plays at games, aught to try and win within the established rules of the game or be inventive enough to force someone to have to invent rules.
Long before I was born, Juan Manuel Fangio was a five time Formula One Champion. He won Formula One Championships for different teams; in part necessitated by the tragedy of the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour Race, when 82 people were killed and Mercedes-Benz withdrew from all official competition for decades. Fangio moved from Mercedes-Benz to Maserati and still won championships. Five Formula One championships was for the longest time, a seemingly impossible record to equal. Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Aryton Senna all got to three, Alain Prost won four but five was still out of reach. Then Michael Schumacher came along and not only won five but six and seven Formula One Championships. I was happy when Schumacher won his fifth and then equally as happy when he won his sixth and seventh. Likewise, now that Lewis Hamilton has made it to seven, I absolutely want to see him win an eighth.
I think that records are meant be broken. Peter Brock went on to win 9 Bathurst 1000 races, after equaling and smashing the previous record of 4. Mark Taylor retired on 334 not out and didn't want to pass the then Australian Test Cricket record of Sir Donald Bradman's; only to have it smashed by Matthew Hayden who would score 380.
If you do have the ability to go out and win a thing a record number of times, if you have the ability to go out and be the fastest, or the strongest, then you absolutely should.
Former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said that:
"Somebody said that football's a matter of life and death to you, I said 'listen, it's more important than that'."
Shankly's quote is often taken with no context but put back into the proper context, in an interview which happened after his career
"Well everything I've got I owe to football, and the dedication I put into the game. You only get out of the game what you put into it, Shelley. And I put everything into it I could, and still do. For the people I was playing for and the people that I was manager for. I didn't cheat them out of anything. So I put all my heart and soul into it, to the extent that my family suffered."
"Do you regret that at all?" (Shelley Rohde)
"Yeah I regret it very much."
Shankly who was a fierce socialist, put everything into the game of football because he knew that people out here in the real world often have scummy jobs and difficult life circumstances, and that football in particular and sport generally matters so very much because it is intrinsically pointless. Shankly believed that everybody should work for each other and his job was to make people happy by building a team that worked together. Having said that, sports and games are always only ever played for the benefit of the participants and everyone watching who are in effect playing by proxy. Sport matters because it doesn't matter.
Everyone watching sport and playing games wants to see something fun. We want to see who wins, we want to see records smashed, we want to see people try and fail at the attempt and we want to see people try and succeed. Precisely because sports and games are intrinsically pointless, the only thing that is created after the thing has ended is the story and the legend. People will hang on waiting for years and decades for a story to be written and they want to see the seemingly unattainable thing be realised. Once that thing is finally attained, it then becomes the new thing.
If it isn't about whether you win or lose but how you play the game, then that last qualifier demands that you ask the question of 'how' you play a game. If you aren't playing to achieve some kind of objective, then what's the point? If you are in a field of many and you have no realistic chances or expectations of actually winning, then you should still compete as though you were going to. If you are 5-0 down in a game of football, then you should still play to win; even if that's impossible. Sometimes if you are playing a game and you can't win, then assuming the role of a spoiler and kingmaker is still a role in which you can win at.
If you are one of those kinds of people who isn't competitive, then you should play games where the objective is to be creative and/or collaborative because there is still an objective and a point. Playing games to create mirth and fun, is still playing to win.
As for the question of whether or not it is right for someone to reach, attain, and then pass a record, that's always on the table if it is within someone's power to do so.
Aside:
Helio Castroneves' win in 2021 was the first time that a car won with a 0 at the beginning. Meyer Shank Racing racing has almost always run the number 60; so 06 is just those numbers reversed.
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