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Safety at the Speed of Life- Blog 1 (2 comments)
Posted by: Michael LeavittMonday, July 21st, 2008
Next month, the world will gather for the 29th Olympiad in Beijing, China. Those who participate and watch these games will be a part of the largest, most extraordinary collaboration of nationhood and humanity that exists in our world today.
Three out of every five people on the planet will watch as athletes from 200 countries join in this peaceful celebration of sport and personal achievement. It is a marvelous moment for mankind and a force for good in our world.
During my service as Governor of Utah, I witnessed, in a powerful way, the effort, strength, sheer talent, beauty, and grace of Olympic athletes. The setting was the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. It was the first major world gathering after September 11th.
The Olympic motto is three Latin words — “Citius, Altius, Fortius” — which mean “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” These words capture the spirit of the Olympic movement, a movement that dares people to break records and to achieve their personal best.
The first of the words in the Olympic motto has particular importance to the topic of my remarks on import safety. That word is citius. It means faster, swifter, quicker. It is the Olympic aspiration of speed. Speed is a value that is engrained in many Olympic athletes, but victory requires another virtue — safety.
Apolo Anton Ohno is arguably the finest short-track speed skater who has ever lived. Short-track speed skating is one of my favorite Olympic sports, a cross between ballet and roller derby. Short-track racers sprint around an oval track wearing helmets and skintight suits. The grace and swiftness of their movement is counterbalanced by some quite spectacular crashes that occur at high speeds.
During the 2002 Games, I watched the 1000-meter, medal-round race where five skaters participated, including Apolo Ohno and a very colorful Australian named Steven Bradbury. What Ohno and Bradbury had in common were colorful personalities. Ohno sported a signature goatee, and Bradbury displayed spiky blonde hair.
I spent time with both of them, and they are terrific guys. Ohno was the most likely to win, Bradbury the least. In fact, Bradbury’s presence in the medal round involved luck. He advanced from the first trial round because of a disqualification. He got through the second round because three skaters crashed. The skaters took their marks. The starter gun sounded. The skaters sprinted through the first straightaway and then fell into a ballet-like glide for eight laps, leaning in unison around each curve.
Going into the last turn of the final lap, Ohno and another skater were stride for stride. The crowd was on its feet. Suddenly, skates bumped, legs flared, and a domino collision left four skaters sprawled on the ice, each banging into the sideboards, just feet from the finish line.
Apolo Ohno crashing with two other speed skaters.
All but Steven Bradbury, who up to that point, was a distant fifth. He skated by the wreckage to victory as the first Australian to ever win a gold medal at the Winter Games.
As a side note, I spoke with Steven the next day in the athletes’ village. I wished him good luck in his next race, to which he replied, “You know mate, I think I’ve used all of my lucky charms.” We later joked that he was “slow enough to win the gold.”
This illustrates an important lesson. In the Olympics, athletes will take extraordinary steps to achieve maximum speed, sometimes sacrificing safety. This produces both heroic results of victory and dramatic crashes. Great sport, but dramatic crashes — when you are dealing with people’s health — are not an option — we must combine both speed and safety.
An executive of a large American retail firm told me that one of its core values is represented by the phrase, “Speed is life.” This connotes the need to be nimble, innovative, and responsive to the need for change in both business operations and consumer preferences.
Too frequently we see product safety problems resulting in unnecessary expense, sickness, injury, and even the loss of life. To the consumer the result is harmful, even tragic. To countries, companies and categories of products, the impact on a reputation can be devastating. In global commerce, as in the Olympics, things happen fast, they have to — but speed without safety carries great risk.
The unsettling stream of product safety problems we are experiencing are a reflection of the most profound changes in commercial patterns in human history — the globalization of trade. This week, I am beginning a blog series on the safety of product imports in a global market that demands speed. I will continue the series in my next post and discuss the impact of global commerce on the need to ensure the safety of imported products.
2 Responses to “Safety at the Speed of Life- Blog 1”
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I completely agree with you about product safety. There’s just so many chemicals in products now a days that we really don’t know what will happen in the next 15-20 years to our health.
What a great story you shared in your post. There are so many factors in winning and success like in the Olympics and it isn’t always speed!