Celebrating the Final Finisher

This entire story in the LA Times is just wonderful:

Kinzang Lhamo, a 26-year-old in the Royal Bhutan Army and the only woman on her country’s three-person Olympic team, is one of those who didn’t win but simply took part in the Paris Olympics, finishing last in the women’s marathon Sunday, the final day of the Games.

The marathon course:

The 26.2-mile course to Versailles and back was symbolic as well, retracing part of the 1789 women’s march on the royal gardens, a key moment from the French Revolution in which thousands of market women, shopkeepers and laborers gathered at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’ city hall, to demand bread and arms, then marched to Versailles to bring Louis XVI back to the capital. That day the king also bowed to demands that he ratify the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which became the preamble to the first written constitution of France in 1791.

DNQ:

In distance running DNF means “did not finish”; 11 of the 91 starters, including Fiona O’Keefe, winner of the U.S. trials in February, took that option Sunday. Lhamo was a DNQ — did not quit.

Lhamo is an ultramarathoner who competing in a five-day event that treks up mountain passes as high as 18,000 feet.

… Lhamo’s marathon performance proved, the Olympics aren’t about winning, they’re about taking part.