If You Ain’t First…

If You Ain’t First…
If You Ain’t First…

I had a quiet moment at breakfast on Sunday and came across a fascinating study as the Olympics closing ceremony played in the background. From the abstract:

This paper investigates the effects of competition outcomes on health by using U.S. Olympic medalists' lifespans and medal colors as a natural experiment. Whereas the life expectancies of gold and bronze medalists do not differ significantly, life expectancy of silver medalists is about 2.4 and 3.9 years less than these former, respectively. These findings are readily explainable by insights from behavioral economics, psychology, and human biology, which suggest that (perceived) dissatisfactory competition outcomes may adversely affect health.

The authors find that Olympic silver medalists on average live significantly shorter lives than gold and bronze medalists. Gold is not too surprising, but bronze?

The reason is well understood by experts: Happier people live longer—that’s a fact. Silver medalists consider their performance to be a loss and are therefore disappointed, while bronze and gold medalists perceive it as a win and are elated. When they think about what could have been, the counterfactual for silver medalists is “I almost won gold,” whereas for bronze it’s “At least I won a medal.” Cue this meme.

Want to understand the world a little better? Subscribe to GZERO Daily by Ian Bremmer for free and get new posts delivered to your inbox every week.

If winning an Olympic silver medal seems like a hard-to-relate problem, you’re right, it is. But I suspect the psychology at work applies beyond Olympians to comparatively normal folks like you and me, and maybe even to whole societies.

After all, aren’t most of us taught to treat life as a race? Competitive drive is core to the American ethos, as American as baseball/NASCAR (politics is ruining our metaphors!) and apple pie. The American dream promises that with enough hard work and determination, there is nothing you can’t achieve. No mountain high enough. No Joneses you can’t keep up with. But this promise has its peril. For someone to be successful at something, there must be someone (even slightly) less successful than them. We can’t all be winners. In the words of Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t first, you’re last!”

Silver medalists look back and think that gold was within reach. Anything but gold is a failure. It doesn’t matter that they just beat every single human being except one. Second place is the first loser—an even bigger loser than third place. I grew up with plenty of people who feel that way. Sure, they’re still better off than most of the world population. But the gap used to be so much wider. And they thought they would do so much better.

They’re not alone. Over the last 20 years, a large minority of Americans—non-Hispanic white men without college degrees—have seen their relative living standards stagnate. Their parents had been better off than their grandparents, and they were sure the same would happen to them. Suddenly, the march of progress came to a halt. For some, it even reversed. Importantly, other people—other groups of people—were getting ahead. That was certainly not supposed to happen.

Can this mismatch between expectations and reality explain the stark rise in deaths of despair among middle-aged white men? Can it account for the rise of Trump and Trumpian politics? I don’t know, but it seems plausible.

Let me stretch the analogy further. Is it possible that America’s perceived relative decline on the global stage over the last 20 years has taken a toll on our national psyche? Did we fail to adjust our expectations for America’s role in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the unipolar moment? We have been trying to defend a lead that feels to many like it’s slipping (even though it’s really not). We have everything to lose and little to gain, except not losing. Playing not to lose sure feels more stressful, and risky, than playing to win. Heavy is the head and all that. The question for you, readers, is can the US afford to continue aiming for gold – and expecting to win it every time – in a GZERO world?

🔔 And if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to my free newsletter, GZERO Daily by Ian Bremmer, to get new posts delivered to your inbox.

More from GZERO Media

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, member of parliament of the Rassemblement National party, leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial alongside 24 other defendants over accusations of misappropriation of European Union funds, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.

REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Oh là là! A French court on Monday found National Rally leader Marine Le Pen guilty of misappropriating European funds to her far-right party, and barred the three-time presidential candidate barred from running for office for the next five years. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing and said last November, “It’s my political death that’s being demanded.”

- YouTube

In a few short weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has rapidly reshaped the federal government, firing thousands of workers, slashing spending, and shutting entire agencies. DOGE’s actions have faced some pushback from the courts, but Musk says he’s just getting started. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with WIRED Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond for a look at President Trump’s increasingly symbiotic relationship with the tech billionaire, Musk’s impact on politics and policy, and what happens when Silicon Valley’s ‘disrupt-or-die’ ethos collides with the machinery of the US government.

People attend a rally to protest against the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as part of a corruption investigation in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 29, 2025.
REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Istanbul this weekend to protest the detainment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a popular contender for the next presidential election.

Democratic-backed Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford and Republican-backed Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel square off in their only debate until their April 1 election.
Brian Cahn/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters

Elections are back in the United States — and so is the money. Six months after the 2024 US presidential vote, Wisconsinites will head to the polls Tuesday to decide whether liberal candidate Susan Crawford or her opponent, conservative Brad Schimel,will tip the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court. The liberals currently have a 4-3 advantage.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the Prime Minister's office in Tokyo on March 30, 2025.
POOL via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters

In his first trip to Asia this weekend, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for greater military cooperation between Tokyo and Washington.

People walk by as a painter repaints an anti-US mural in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday, March 29, 2025.
Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Iran, threatening to bomb the country and impose secondary tariffs if Tehran fails to reach a new agreement on its nuclear program. In a telephone interview with NBC News, Trump stated, “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”

President Donald Trump waves as he walks before departing for Florida from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on March 28, 2025.

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Is the bloom off the bromance between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin? On Sunday, Trump took Putin to task over Russia’s foot-dragging on a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to tariff Russian oil and impose more sanctions on the country.

Rescuers work at the site of a building that collapsed after the strong earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Sunday, March 30, 2025.
REUTERS/Stringer

The death toll continues to rise in Myanmar after a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck near the central city of Mandalay on March 28. Approximately 1,700 people are dead and over 3,400 injured, with the US Geological Service estimating that casualties could top 10,000. Relief operations are further complicated by Myanmar’s ongoing civil war.

Listen: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, made his fortune-breaking industries—space, cars, social media—and is now trying to break the government… in the name of fixing it. But what happens when Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast and break things’ ethos collides with the machinery of federal bureaucracy? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with WIRED Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to unpack the implications of Musk’s deepening role in the Trump administration and what’s really behind his push into politics.