On land and in water, a shining summer of striving

July sweats and bleeds and vomits into August. In Toulouse, during the Tour de France, Jonas Abrahamsen, who starts the race 10 days after fracturing his collarbone, wins a stage. In Singapore, in a draining heat, 10km open water swimmers at the world aquatics championships are handed mid-race feeds and then regurgitate part of this gruel into the water.

- Rohit Brijnath

July sweats and bleeds and vomits into August. In Toulouse, during the Tour de France, Jonas Abrahamsen, who starts the race 10 days after fracturing his collarbone, wins a stage. In Singapore, in a draining heat, 10km open water swimmers at the world aquatics championships are handed mid-race feeds and then regurgitate part of this gruel into the water. "It's not pretty," says Australian swimmer Moesha Johnson.

Yet they go on and on, just like Mohammed Siraj charging in at the Oval, cheeky, grinning, prickly, transparent, and finally everyone can see who he really is, a study in endeavor, a bearded foot soldier who gives weight to all those words you tried to teach your kid. Unswerving. Wholehearted. Unstinting.

Siraj, like the cyclist and the swimmer, must be always asking himself an ancient, elemental question.

What you got?

How much more?

What is tired?

Winning is wonderful, but it's the striving to get there which seizes us, isn't it? The bloody-mindedness, the vigorous application of skill, the aching tilting at limits in search of something more profound than medals chucked into cupboards. It's one-armed Chris Woakes, like Anil Kumble with his strapped broken jaw, every wincing step an act of resoluteness. It's Tour riders falling and then taking abraded bodies down slick slopes at filthy speeds. "You play with your life," former rider Fabian Cancellara tells The New York Times.