The Race

Life was full of tough breaks but, for Ella, winning or losing was just a matter of perspective!

- GILLIAN HARVEY

Ella crossed the finish line, raising her tired arms in celebration. The few people still standing at the barrier clapped, and someone stepped forward to hand her a bottle of water.

She opened it and drank grateful, thirsty gulps before wiping her mouth and waving again. She felt her mouth widen into a grin. Her body was tired, aching and sticky from sweat, but she'd done it. She'd won.

A small man with a goatee and a serious expression stepped forward, holding a recording device in front of him.

"So how does it feel," he said, "to be this year's loser?"

"Excuse me?"

He pushed his glasses back up his nose and grimaced apologetically.

"Sorry," he said, "I have to ask. You're this year's loser, and I just wanted to ask how it feels to finish last out of two hundred participants?"

"But I didn't lose," she said.

She closed her eyes for a moment, picturing, as she often did, the skid of the car on the road; the way the steering wheel had become light and ineffective in her hands. How she'd pumped on the pedal and tried to steer into the spin as she'd been taught; the flash of fear when she'd realised in that moment there was nothing she could do.