The tortoise, admittedly, got off to a very poor start. When the race began he was even more sluggish than usual. It was clearly out of shape, which raised questions about offseason activities and occasional absences from spring training. Not only that, the tortoise looked unfocused and unmotivated. At the beginning of the race, it was running a, dare-we-say, LAZY brand of animal racing.

But even though it took its time, plodding along, no one was really worried. The race is long. There’s many ups and downs, and it was still very much any animals’ race to win.

Slow and steady wins the race, everyone said, and they really believed it was true. The hare was just plain faster, it had raw talent that most animals could never match. “I’m not trying to match the hare’s speed”, the tortoise thought to itself. “Because if I run like the hare, I’m sure to lose to the hare.”

By the middle of summer the hare had amassed a huge lead and was cruising along. Yet tortoise enthusiasts were still quietly hopeful. They knew that there’s always slumps every animal goes through, slow patches when they’re not running their best. Animal racing is a weird sport and you can’t get too emotional about it from day to day. And let’s not forget about regression to the mean! Was this pace the hare was on even sustainable? Many thought no.

When it came to animal racing one could have an entire race seemingly wrapped up, but down the stretch things always got more competitive. As the finish line looms, the race tends to tighten, and people waited for that tightening with hopeful expectation.

Any moment now, the tortoise is going to flip the switch they said. The pilot light will come on and it’ll be game time! But as the race progressed, the hare just kept getting further and further and further ahead. “Come on tortoise!” the people cheered from the stands. “Wake up from this dreadful slumber you’re in and give us a good race!”

There is a myth that because the tortoise was slower and less talented it tended to work a lot harder than its rival the hare. Tortoise wasn’t speedy, but it was all about doing the little things right. People tended to believe it ran a clean race and was more focused on the fundamentals than the hated hare.

But that myth is not always true. Sometimes a hare can be faster, more talented AND work harder than anyone else on the racetrack. Talent and effort are not inversely related.

Lop-sided races like this are what happen when you trot an inferior product out on the field and expect a meandering turtle to keep pace with a quick footed rabbit. Instead of going out and finding a faster animal like a gazelle or a cheetah, the people were marketed hope and possibility.

The much anticipated Cinderella comeback wasn’t meant to be. Hare crossed the finish line with the tortoise not even in sight. It was a complete blowout and was remembered as one of the worst and most uninteresting races of all time. Turns out watching a tortoise race a hare is in fact a gigantic waste of time.

The Tortoise and The Hare