My rival became my best friend

Fang Yuan and I first raced each other in the final of the 5,000 metres at the provincial youth athletics championships.

Before the gun, we stood side by side on the start line. He turned his head and looked at me. I looked back. Neither of us said anything. He beat me by four seconds.

Over the next ten years we met on the track more times than I can count. He won more often. I won less. When a start list came out, I looked for his name first. So did he. He admitted it later: the first line of any results sheet was always where he looked for me. "Checking whether you're in it. If you're in it, the race is worth running."

Outsiders think rivalry in competitive sport is hostility. Insiders know it is a debt. Without Fang Yuan I would never have reached the times I reached. On the days training went soft, I thought about him surely adding mileage that week, and I could not stop. In the last lap of a hard race, the sound of his breathing beside me bought me another stretch. We were two bamboos pushing against each other: he grew a joint, so I had to grow a joint. In ten years our personal bests broke each other seven times. He took the provincial record in year three. I took it back in year four. He took it back in year six.

The friendship proper started with an injury. In the sixth winter something went in my Achilles tendon and the doctor said no hard training for at least six months. Those months were the greyest of my career. Watching my teammates train. Watching Fang Yuan win two titles in one season. I hid from all of them. I could not hide from him. He turned up at my building with a crate of milk, sat on the low wall by the flower beds downstairs, and called me. "Get down here."

We sat by the flower beds until dark. He said a thing I have thought about ever since. "Your tendon tore. That's not my business, and I'm not going to go easy on you. But you can't let it go to waste. What goes to waste isn't your times. It's the person you built over these ten years."

Then he did something. He introduced me to his rehab coach and came with me to three recovery sessions a week. The coach told me Fang Yuan had phoned him, and the first thing he said was, "He can't be finished. He's my rival." The coach thought it was a joke, and Fang Yuan said it again. "I mean it. If he's finished, who am I going to beat?"

My first race back, his name was on the start list. We stood side by side again. Before the gun he said, "I'm not giving you this one." I said, "If you give me this one, we're done."

He won by two seconds. After the line he came over and we slapped hands hard enough to sting. Someone in the stand wondered aloud: a minute ago they were killing each other, and now look at them.

A rival is the best mirror you will ever be given, and the best whetstone. The person who pushes you to your limit is the person who understands you best in the world.

After we retired we opened a running camp together. The brochure carries two lines. "Want to win? Come to us." "Want a rival who will make you stronger? Also come to us." The kids at the camp asked which of us was the champion. Fang Yuan and I looked at each other and could not answer. Over ten years we had beaten each other more than twenty times, and the total margin was under a minute.

The real answer is this. Without him, half the drama goes out of my ten years. Without me, half the weight goes out of his medals. There is a kind of friendship that begins with "I will not concede to you" and ends with "I cannot do this without you."