How often does someone win a race coming from behind? And how often does someone win leading the race from start to finish, especially for longer distances?
First places are often racing against themselves and the clock or the parameters they have set from the start. This is true in sports like athletics or cycling, but also between businesses or even countries.
If the race against themselves isn't motivating enough after a while, they may leave their guard down or even think they are a winner before the competition started and they stop pushing so hard, become lazy, and so on, and often that leads to surprises.
The second place or even lower in a race has many advantages, believe it or not.
In a race where air resistance is an important factor, it's better to let the lead face all the air resistance, and you compete behind them with some cover. That's true for running, but also true for cycling. In fact, in cycling, air resistance is so important that entire teams are put into the service of the team leader, or the one who is likely to win or do best in the championship. Also, how many sprints are won coming up from behind?
There are other advantages to not being the lead of the race. From behind you can better keep an eye on what happens in front of you, and you have the extra motivation to get closer and overtake the leader, if you can.
I know enough athletes who have the strategy to not lead in the competitions in which they participate and come from behind on the last few laps and often win. Such a strategy can also be distracting for the opponents who would expect them to be up there in the leading group if they are the favorites. But I've seen situations (including at these Olympic games) where the winner preferred to run last most of the time and win the race on its last part. This is a strategy one of the top athletes in our country (Gabi Szabo) applied at 5000m women, when she was racing. And she often won.
But it doesn't work for everyone. To win with such a strategy, an athlete needs to have a great finish and dose their effort very well throughout the race. Same for cycling on the last part of the race. A cyclist without explosion, doesn't have a chance if they come together at the end with a sprinter or someone with better sprinting qualities. A heavy cyclist or a climber needs to get away on their own to have a chance at winning.
How Does This Potential Strategy Apply to Countries?
I gave enough sports examples until now. But this sometimes applies to businesses or even countries. Those in lead may become complacent in their leading position, while the runner up has a chance to learn from the mistakes of the leader and can have a higher disruptive potential if they are more agile.
Let's take the US and China for example, and only one domain, although there are many other examples: energy.
While other technologies may appear or be enhanced to bring the energy generation costs to near zero, before that time it is interesting to see how the generation of energy has evolved between the two countries. knowing that we are now at a time when consumption of energy rises exponentially, with the growth of AI and POW mining for crypto.
In year 2000, China produced around 1,000 TWh of energy and the US around 3800 TWh. So a significant lead by the US. Around year 2011 or 2012 China took the lead in energy generation. At that time, the US only increased its generation to a little above 4100 TWh. Nowadays (year 2022) China has a lead with 8,849 TWh while the US remained about the same at 4,287 TWh.
So, China grew its energy generation by around 8x in 20+ years, while the US only marginally increased its numbers. It's no wonder Trump mentioned the energy sector at his rally at the Bitcoin Conference! They must read the same articles I do, lol.