By Rohit Brijnath

SOME weeks ago, I sat down in Muthu's Curry with a man who once could never stop moving. We talked about the Ashes, about his Indian connection (his mother is half-Indian) and, since he was once a champion, we talked about losing.

Losing attracts me, it tells me more about athletes, how they keep their faces blank despite the devastation within, how they swallow it, learn from it, rebound from it.

Losing is what makes champions, it grows them up, draws out their desire, even Federer's. Three years, he once said, it took him to get his attitude right.

Six of their first eight meetings Federer had lost to Lleyton Hewitt early this decade. Then, in a 2003 Davis Cup match, the Swiss led the Australian two sets to love and a break. Yet he lost again. It should have crippled him, but Federer has since beaten Hewitt 14 times in a row. Something happened after that day, the mind understood, toughness came to stay, resoluteness was revealed.

The amateur athlete is fearful, he wonders "jeez, it's 15-40, I hope I make the forehand", but the great player hits his forehand just as hard as he has all day. He trusts himself eventually, he convinces the fellow in the mirror they have done the hard work necessary for victory. Eventually he is ready to win because he has tired of losing.

My lunch companion knows this. His name is Sebastian Coe. Now grey invades his head, then his feet danced across tracks. At the 1980 Moscow Olympics, he was favourite to win the 800m, but inexplicably came second. It was unfathomable to him.

"It is unfortunate," he said over lunch, "that I chose an Olympic final to run the most inept 800 metres of my life. You hope that the days you foul up are in a county championship, not in front of 100,000 people."

But maybe disbelief is followed by fury and then by confidence. This is where great athletes separate themselves, by clutching onto the faintest positive, by turning defeat into a tutorial. The 1,500m is a few days away, and here Coe is not favourite. But what, I ask, does he tell himself?

Three things.

"First, I told myself that statistically I was never going to run that badly again. The chances of it happening (so soon again) were slim.

"Second, I put things in perspective." He talked of the gifted American runner Jim Ryun, who was tripped in a heat during the 1,500m in 1972, his chance gone in a flurry of colliding limbs. But Coe was different, one race was gone but another left. "I had the luxury of another chance."

Finally, he was "brutal" with himself about his 800m performance. He did not say to himself "bad luck, son", or "there, there, boy", he demanded of himself.

"I said to myself, you have not run thousands and thousands of miles and lifted tonnes and tonnes of weight to come second."

He did not.

He won the 1500m gold, and then, four years later, he did it again.

The champion finishes the story of the loser he once was, finishes his kebabs and leaves. Walking, not running.