Time & Perspective Quote by Alberto Juantorena

There’s a quiet rebuke embedded in Juantorena’s line: the world loves athletes most when they’re easiest to consume, and forgets them the second the body stops producing spectacle. Coming from an athlete, not a minister or a sponsor, the sentence lands like a practical demand rather than a feel-good slogan. It’s not “support athletes” in the abstract; it’s a warning about what happens when sport treats people as short-term assets.

The intent is protective and institutional. “We want” signals a collective - a federation, a union impulse, a leadership stance - pushing against the old model where an athlete’s value is measured in medals and marketability. “Make sure” is doing heavy lifting: it implies that, left to the system, the future won’t be secured. That’s the subtext of structural neglect: injuries, burnout, precarious finances, limited education pathways, and the sudden identity collapse many athletes face when the routine and recognition disappear.

The phrasing also smuggles in a critique of how countries and organizations harvest national pride. Athletes are asked to perform patriotism with their bodies; the least a society can do is offer career training, healthcare, and credible transitions afterward. Juantorena - famous for achievements that made him useful to institutions - is essentially insisting on reciprocity. The cultural moment here is bigger than sport: it mirrors a broader labor conversation about what happens when a job defines you, then discards you. Athletes are just the clearest, most televised case.