What makes for compelling comebacks

Pearly-Thinaah celebrating after winning their group stage match against Japan – they had drawn the 'Group of Death' with badminton's top seeds, so beating everyone to get beyond the group stage was a huge accomplishment. Though the pair eventually lost out on the bronze medal, they did far better than most had expected. — AFP

Everybody loves a comeback story. It is the bread and butter of Hollywood movie plots, of characters who have fallen or been written off, only to show resilience and rise again.

Which goes to say, don’t write people off, even if it looks like the whole world has dismissed them.

You could almost say the same about the members of Malaysia’s badminton team and their hopes for medal glory in the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympics.

While badminton is pretty much the only sport where Malaysia has realistic hopes for a gold medal, initial prospects seemed bleak. Only men’s doubles pair Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik looked like they had a chance, but the last tournament they won was the Denmark Open in October 2023. And everyone agreed that despite recent success, Lee Zii Jia is still a long way off from the form that won him the All-England in 2021, while women’s singles player Goh Jin Wei came out of retirement to qualify for the Olympics, which didn’t say much about her chances.

Then women’s doubles pair Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan – ranked 12th in the world – found themselves in the “Group of Death”, facing the world’s Nos.1, 6, and 8; and mixed doubles pair Chen Tang Jie and Toh Ee Wei were criticised by coach Rexy Mainaky as recently as May for underperforming.

However, the cautious optimism turned much more positive as the first games were played in Paris. Tang Jie-Ee Wei proved their worth when they beat the China’s No.2 pair, Feng Yan Zhe-Huang Dong Ping, en route to qualifying for the quarterfinals.

Perhaps even more impressively, Pearly-Thinaah overcame the odds to beat both the Japanese team ranked No.6 in the world, as well as the Indonesian pair that included a gold medallist from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In an interview after the last group game Thinaah said they just had to laugh when the draw was originally revealed, but they also recognised that the Olympic Games were something that they “just wanted to give our 100% on court” for.

Even women’s singles player Goh who failed to qualify out of the group stage pushed her much higher ranked South Korean opponent to the last point of the last set before eventually succumbing. In an interview afterwards, she apologised for losing, but the interviewer quite correctly disagreed with her needing to say sorry, saying “Everyone is inspired by you”.

What makes a comeback compelling? Why is success sweeter when it comes after failure?

I would like to think it’s because we understand that the human spirit isn’t about succeeding each and every time we try, but that failing happens more often than not, and the truth is we only really learn when we fail.

Indeed, behavioural scientists talk about grit and the importance of perseverance when in pursuit of long-term goals (like a gold medal at the Olympics, for example).

You see these comeback stories a lot in the business world, probably the most well-known one being Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, and the reintroduction of innovation in products like the iMac, iPod, iPad, and the now ubiquitous iPhone under his watch. The company went from losing more than a billion dollars in 1997 to turning a profit in the millions just a year later under Jobs.

Apple was worth almost US$400bil (RM1.8 trillion at today’s rates) when Jobs left in August 2011 before passing away soon after following a years-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Crucially, the Jobs who rejoined Apple in 1997 was different in some ways from the cofounder who had been kicked out of his own company years before.

He was fired in 1985 in part for being argumentative and having a spectacular falling out with the board, and when he returned he had somehow learned to refocus that confrontational aspect of his personality. Inc.com columnist Justin Bariso says that on his return Jobs encouraged his staff to work collaboratively through an open debate of ideas. Effec-tively, Jobs had learned that arguments can work if they go both ways, and he used this method to push employees to consider and come up with innovation.

Of course, not all comebacks are great, especially in politics. Donald Trump, for example, has come back to try and become the US president again despite losing and then trying very hard to get the courts to say he won four years ago but failing miserably.

Closer to home, a political party that has practically lost the majority of its support has somehow managed to not only cling on, but also try to organise a comeback for a disgraced politician who most people think absolutely deserves to be in jail.

I think in all of these cases (including that of Jobs) that the lesson learned from past failures isn’t necessarily about changing your behaviour, but rather that you need to double down on who you truly are in the right way.

And as much as I want to condemn not learning from your mistakes, sometimes this is precisely the lesson you need to learn.

Take Pearly-Thinaah, for example. When asked what they thought about messages on social media that basically said “The real Pearly-Thinaah is back”, they replied that they had unsuccessfully tried to change how they played – in their words, they tried to play safe and avoid mistakes. “But that isn’t Pearly and Thinaah,” they stressed. They doubled down on who they are as players and it paid off.

By the time you read this column, Malaysia may have already won a clutchful of medals in badminton, including the elusive gold. Or we may have nothing to show for all the heroics. Personally, I think it shouldn’t matter, for the Olympics motto isn’t to pursue all that glitters, but rather to continually find the best version of yourself, and improve despite perhaps failing – ie, to go faster and higher, and become stronger. Citius, altius, fortius, indeed.

Update: It's a commentators curse to laud a sports team so highly and then see them crash a step or two before glory. But I maintain, the Malaysian badminton team played to or above expectations. The BWF (Badminton World Federation) World Tour Finals are in December, along with a US$2.5mil (RM11.2mil) cash prize fund, and for the Malaysian shuttlers just outside the top eight rank needed to qualify, there is still ample time to prove that a momentary setback is something you can still come back from.

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In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.