The prize and the weather

At the annual race, a sudden gust carried the leading runner's hat into the face of the runner behind her. She won by a step. The rules offered no remedy for wind, and nobody proposed withholding the medal. Afterwards, however, the winner told an interviewer that victory proved how much more she had wanted it. We need not decide that she deserved nothing in order to find this explanation excessive. She had trained, paced herself well and remained quick at the finish. Nor need we pretend that the second runner was secretly the better athlete. The gust does not answer that question. What it interrupts is the ease with which an outcome becomes a complete account of the person who achieved it. Rules must often finish where explanations continue. A prize can be allocated unambiguously even when its meaning remains disputed. The trouble begins when we ask the medal to distribute not merely first place but all the credit, and then take the absence of a medal as evidence that nothing creditable occurred.