I think the concept of ''winning'' has a lot to answer for - not to mention the replacement of an intrinsic desire to be your best with the pursuit of financial reward. The Pope said: ''When sport is viewed solely in economic terms or as the pursuit of victory at all costs, we run the risk of reducing athletes to mere products from which to profit. Athletes themselves enter a system that sweeps them away; they can lose the true meaning of their activity, that joy and play that attracted them as young people, which drove them to make so many sacrifices to become champions. Sport is harmony, but if the immoderate pursuit of money and success takes over, this harmony can be lost.'' Dreaming of winning - whether it be at an Olympics, on grand final day or on the local sports ground - is not the problem. Dreams give us the ''why'' and get us out of bed in the morning. It is those dreams that keep us going when our bodies say ''stop''. Sport would be meaningless if neither team cared whether they won or lost. The tension of competitors vying to be the best is what makes sport exciting and meaningful. Trying to win and training to win is vitally important. But aspiring to win is vastly different from winning at all costs. As sportspeople, we can control how good we can be. We can train to improve ourselves every session, to learn to compete better, to strengthen our mental skills and our physical capacity. We cannot control how good our opponents are.

True sportsmanship is also about respecting your opposition for the commitment they have shown, irrespective of who wins. Sport is about training to know how to do your best, doing your best, then working out how you can do better. Innate satisfaction derives from knowing that you raced or played to your absolute best. This is a concept too often overlooked in the hurly burly of modern sport. Last weekend, I raced in the Head of the Yarra for Melbourne University Boat Club. It is a race in eights over a windy, 8.6-kilometre course on the Yarra River. Our crew desperately wanted to win this race. On this occasion though, our arch rival Mercantile triumphed. There was a strange feeling after the race. It was as if my crew mates were aware that we had just raced the best race we could possibly have hoped for - we had used every bit of energy and expertise - but were not allowed to be happy because we had lost. We should have been satisfied, taken pride in trying our best against a crew that was better on the day.

We should all be responsible for teaching the skill of honest assessment of sporting performance. Whether you won, lost or drew is a relevant detail in this assessment, but it is not the only factor. A medal or trophy is a bonus, an external recognition of internal fulfilment. But too much focus on the bling is a different story, where the desire for fame and fortune replaces self-satisfaction as the driving motivator. Doping, match fixing and foul play are symptoms of a sporting system that has lost touch with its roots, where winning and financial reward are more important than the will to win. Like the chicken and the egg, we have a sporting dialogue that largely worships and celebrates winners. More often than not, our focus is on ''what'' they have done, rather than ''how'' they have done it. Often, our ''winners'' have inspirational stories of triumph over adversity, of sacrifice, of learning. Often, victory is a reflection of a very admirable ''how'', the sort of story we would like children to hear and aspire to. But winning is not always synonymous with integrity. Occasionally, our ''winners'', the Lance Armstrongs of the world, become so fixated on the ''what'' that the ''how'' becomes irrelevant. As sportspeople, public praise for our achievements is appreciated and humbling, but we must never lose sight of the fundamental difference between judging ourselves on how well we aspired to win, and judging ourselves purely on winning.

In life, those who strive valiantly are the true victors - win, lose or draw. Rower Kimberley Crow is world champion in the single sculls and was recently named the World Rowing Female Crew of the Year.