WEBVTT

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Every other night in Japan

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I step out of my apartment,

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I climb up a hill for 15 minutes,

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and then I head into my local health club,

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where three ping-pong tables
are set up in a studio.

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And space is limited,

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so at every table

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one pair of players practices forehands,

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another practices backhands,

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and every now and then,
the balls collide in midair

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and everybody says,

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"Wow!"

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Then, choosing lots,

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we select partners and play doubles.

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But I honestly couldn't
tell you who's won,

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because we change partners
every five minutes.

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And everybody is trying really hard

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to win points

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but nobody is keeping track
of who is winning games.

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And after an hour or so
of furious exertion,

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I can honestly tell you

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that not knowing who has won

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feels like the ultimate victory.

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In Japan, it's been said

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they've created a competitive spirit
without competition.

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Now, all of you know that geopolitics
is best followed by watching ping-pong.

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(Laughter)

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The two strongest powers in the world

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were fiercest enemies

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until, in 1972, an American ping-pong team
was allowed to visit Communist China.

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And as soon as the former adversaries

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were gathered around
some small green tables,

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each of them could claim a victory,

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and the whole world
could breathe more easily.

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China's leader, Mao Tse-tung,

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wrote a whole manual on ping-pong,

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and he called the sport

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"a spiritual nuclear weapon."

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And it's been said that the only
honorary lifelong member

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of the US Table Tennis Association

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is the then-President Richard Nixon,

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who helped to engineer
this win-win situation

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through ping-pong diplomacy.

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But long before that,

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really the history of the modern world

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was best told through
the bouncing white ball.

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Ping-pong sounds like
a cousin of sing-song,

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like something Eastern,

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but actually it's believed
that it was invented by high-class Brits

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during Victorian times,

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who started hitting wine corks
over walls of books after dinner.

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(Laughter)

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No exaggeration.

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And by the end of World War I,

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the sport was dominated by players
from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire:

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eight of our nine
early world championships

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were claimed by Hungary.

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And Eastern Europeans grew so adept

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at hitting back everything
that was hit at them

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that they almost brought
the whole sport to a standstill.

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In one championship match
in Prague in 1936,

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the first point is said to have lasted
two hours and 12 minutes.

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The first point!

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Longer than a Mad Max movie.

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And according to one of the players,
the umpire had to retire with a sore neck

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before the point was concluded.

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(Laughter)

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That player started hitting
the ball back with his left hand

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and dictating chess moves between shots.

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Many in the audience
started, of course, filing out,

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as that single point lasted
maybe 12,000 strokes,

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and an emergency meeting of
the International Table Tennis Association

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had to be held then and there,

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and soon the rules were changed

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so that no game could last
longer than 20 minutes.

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Sixteen years later,
Japan entered the picture

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when a little-known
watchmaker called Hiroji Satoh

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showed up at the world championships
in Bombay in 1952.

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And Satoh was not very big,
he wasn't highly rated,

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he was wearing spectacles,

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but he was armed with a paddle
that was not pimpled,

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as other paddles were,

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but covered by a thick spongy rubber foam.

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And thanks to this
silencing secret weapon,

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the little-known Satoh won a gold medal.

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One million people came out
into the streets of Tokyo

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to greet him up on his return,

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and really Japan's postwar resurgence
was set into motion.

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What I learned though
at my regular games in Japan

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is more what could be called
the inner sport of global domination,

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sometimes known as life.

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We never play singles in our club,

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only doubles,

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and because, as I say,
we change partners every five minutes,

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if you do happen to lose,
you're very likely to win

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six minutes later.

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We also play best-of-two sets,

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so often there's no loser at all.

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Ping-pong diplomacy.

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And I always remember that as a boy
growing up in England, I was taught

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that the point of a game was to win,

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but in Japan I'm encouraged to believe
that really the point of a game

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is to make as many people as possible
around you feel that they are winners.

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So you're not careening up and down
as an individual might,

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but you're part of a regular,
steady chorus.

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The most skillful players in our club

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deploy their skills to turn
a 9-1 lead for their team

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into a 9-9 game in which everybody
is intensely involved,

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and my friend who hits
these high looping lobs

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that smaller players flail at and miss,

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well he wins a lot of points,
but I think he's thought of as a loser.

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In Japan, a game of ping-pong
is really like an act of love.

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You're learning how to play with somebody,

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rather than against her.

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And I'll confess at first
this seemed to me

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to take all the fun out of the sport.

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I couldn't exult after a tremendous upset
victory against our strongest players,

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because six minutes later
with a new partner

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I was falling behind again.

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On the other hand,

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I never felt disconsolate,

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and when I flew away from Japan
and started playing singles again

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with my English arch-rival,

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I noticed that after every defeat,
I was really broken-hearted.

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But after every victory,
I couldn't sleep either

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because I knew there was
only one way to go,

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and that was down.

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Now, if I were trying to do
business in Japan,

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this would lead to endless frustration.

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In Japan, unlike elsewhere,

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if the score is still level
after four hours,

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a baseball game ends in a tie,

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and because the league standings
are based on winning percentage,

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a team with quite a few ties
can finish ahead of a team

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with more victories.

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One of the first times an American
was ever brought over to Japan

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to lead a professional
Japanese baseball team,

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Bobby Valentine in 1995,

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he took this really mediocre squad,

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he lead them to a stunning
second-place finish,

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and he was instantly fired.

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Why?

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Well, said the team spokesman,

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because of his emphasis on winning.

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Official Japan can feel quite a lot
like that points that was said to last

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two hours and 12 minutes,

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and playing not to lose

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can take all the imagination,
the daring, the excitement out of things.

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At the same time,

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playing ping-pong in Japan

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reminds me why choirs
regularly enjoy more fun

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than soloists.

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In a choir, your only job is to play
your small part perfectly,

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to hit your notes with feeling,

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and by so doing to help to create
a beautiful harmony

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that's much greater
than the sum of its parts.

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Yes, every choir does need a conductor,

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but I think a choir releases you
from a child's simple sense of either-ors.

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You come to see that
the opposite of winning isn't losing,

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it's failing to see the larger picture.

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As my life goes on,

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I'm really startled to see that no event

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can properly be assessed
for years after it has unfolded.

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I once lost everything
I owned in the world,

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every last thing, in a wildfire.

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But in time, I came to see
that it was that seeming loss

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that allowed me to live
on the Earth more gently,

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to write without notes,

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and actually to move to Japan

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and the inner health club
known as the ping-pong table.

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Conversely, I once stumbled
into the perfect job

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and I came to see that seeming happiness

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can stand in the way of true joy

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even more than misery does.

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Playing doubles in Japan
really relieves me of all my anxiety,

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and at the end of an evening,
I notice everybody is filing out

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in a more or less equal state of delight.

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I'm reminded every night

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that not getting ahead

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isn't the same thing as falling behind

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any more than not being lively
is the same thing as being dead.

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And I've come to understand why it is
that Chinese universities

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are said to offer degrees in ping-pong,

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and why researchers
have found that ping-pong

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can actually help a little
with mild mental disorders

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and even autism.

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But as I watch the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo,

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I'm going to be keenly aware

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that it won't be possible
to tell who's won or who's lost

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for a very long time.

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You remember that point I mentioned

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that was said to last
for two hours and 12 minutes?

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Well, one of the players from that game

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ended up six years later

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in the concentration camps
of Auschwitz and Dachau.

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But he walked out alive.

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Why?

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Simply because a guard in the gas chamber

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recognized him from
his ping-pong playing days.

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Had he been the winner of that epic match,

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it hardly mattered.

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As you recall, many people had filed out
before even the first point was concluded.

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The only thing that saved him

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was the fact that he took part.

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The best way to win any game,

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Japan tells me every other night,

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is never, never to think about the score.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)