The photograph taken after the race

Text: an original contemporary sporting-essay-style practice extract.

The newspaper photograph showed me smiling beside the finish banner. It did not show me sitting on a kerb ten minutes later, unable to decide whether I wanted water or simply to be left alone. The smile was real. So was the second scene, which nobody had asked to photograph.

For weeks, I had imagined finishing as a clear change from effort to happiness. At the kerb, I felt pleased, sore, hungry and oddly without a next task. A friend sat beside me without asking for another smile. She fetched my bag and listened while I described the slowest part of the route. That conversation made the morning easier to understand than the picture’s neat version of it.

I kept the photograph. I like seeing myself pleased. But when someone asks how the race went, I now begin with a longer answer than the image supplies. Completing something difficult can be worth celebrating without requiring every feeling afterwards to stand obediently beneath the banner.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that a single image can leave out an important part of an achievement.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.