Winning and being made to lose

There was talk of them having been in the Kenyan highlands for a month, training at altitude. Word was they followed that with a couple of hard sessions at Crusheen Hill. Talked Ger Loughnane into coming along. Said   he'd never seen anything like the commitment, the all-consuming will to win. "The intensity lads, the intensity. Like '95 again, but with more rice".
Brian O'Driscoll was brought in to give a pep talk and three minutes into it, he quit. "They don't need it", he explained, simple as that. Some say that after that they retreated to a Zen monastery high on the slopes of Mt. Fuji where they stayed while their minds wandered free, contemplating the singleness of victory and the immutability of loss.
They were spoken of in hushed tones of awe and reverence as befits those who joust with the immortals.
They were ... the White Team.
And as for the Red Team, well they had been seen training with Lance Armstrong; and later spotted at a pharmaceutical company on the outskirts of Beijing, allegedly on a 'goodwill visit'. There were rumors of cash in plastic bags and blood transfusions from orphanages. Never proven, but the rumors stuck. They were after all competing for the 'Undokai' (Sports Day), the biggest event in the Mizumoto Hoikusho calendar since, well, last year's  Undokai.
Stretching first - don't want to lose all that hard training to a tight Achilles tendon just moments before the start. Just look at the frenzied intensity in those eyes - Jesus, but it would give you the shivers.

The opening ceremony was a spectacular display of martial grandeur, evoking John Bonham, the movie 300, and in Cian's case, the hard bastard hurley swing of an enraged Ollie Baker. Kazuma and Taichi uttered some blood curling pronouncements about how they would trod the Red Team's bones into wind blown dust before making off with their womenfolk and sweets. All the while Cian continued to demonstrate just how those poor wretches wearing red would be rendered into dust.

Let the games begin!!! we thundered, and begin they did. First up was the tricky ball in the hoop competition. But the White Team won that one easily enough. 2 points in the bag there. This was followed by the parents demonstrating their complete lack of eye-hand coordination for the same event. Or at least the Red Team did. The White Team with their secret weapon, the tall, lanky foreigner, won this one too. Another 2 points in the bag.

Time for a totally random musical interlude. Why? Because they are White Team - they just can. Talent to burn, these kids.

Next up was the exclusive G 1 race, a decathlon for our times. Cian was the anchor and yes, all too easily the winner too. Another 2 points in the bag.

So we are up to the final event, the relay and by this stage White Team, having won the first three events are 6 points while Red Team, now firmly clasped in defeat's intimate embrace are 3 points. These games are over ladies and gents; those of you with familial bonds to the red team may begin to sneak away in shame now.
And we're ... off.

And incredibly, red team win. Though not so incredibly when the little refusenik girl at the start of the race is subsequently seen with a plastic bag full of cash and kit-kats. Still, even with this disappointing loss, White Team have it in the bag.
But they, nor us, us naive fools, us rain-soaked suckers who still believed in the purity of amateur sports, didn't count on the sheer, brazen cynicism of the must-win-at-all-costs red team.
In an unprecedented move of such breath taking, undisguised favoritism, the principal of the Hoikusho unilaterally awarded 5 points, yes 5 unfrigginbelievable points to the red team for their relay win, thus rendering the final score this

And thus awarding, nay handing victory in the Undokai on a Judas plate to the red team.
Unfrigginbelievable!!!
How that man can live with himself  is beyond me.
The crowd didn't like it either, not one bit and for a while there after final result was announced it all turned a bit Chinese.

What had started a such a celebration of sporting joy had ended as an exercise in easy cynicism and violence. 
For shame.