Cooperation: Opponent Helping Each Other Win

[Stephenk53]

What are some moments you have seen where an opponent helps their opponent in some way, such as like when a enemy robotics team gave my team rubber to assist with picking objectives up allowing us to do better that year or when another team let us borrow an expensive router when ours broke so we could keep competing.

 

[ChemAir]

I have seen this in pretty much any type of mechanical/motorsport competition I have been involved into one degree or another. It was always very common at drag races. Most any racer would let others borrow tools, parts, etc., even if it didn't help the lender.

Most competitors, myself included, preferred a race to a competition bye, and wanted to see everyone do the best they could. Occasionally, someone would be helped by a racer they would meet later, and borrower would beat the lender with the borrowed part. At the end, the winner would pull the part off the car and return it, or pay for it, no animosity between them other than good ribbing.

It has happened to me from both sides. I have raced with a borrowed supercharger, torque converter, rear end gears, etc., and lent tires, wheels, ballast weight, lots of electronic parts. I generally tried to help others as much as I might expect it from them.

 

[CWatters]

I used to fly competition model aircraft at international level. On at least one occasion saw people lend or give teams from Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union high performance motors that were worth a small fortune to them. Usually repaid with excellent hospitality.

 

[berkeman]

I was the standby medic at a local weekend soccer tournament last weekend. Some of the games between the top teams were pretty "chippy", with hard collisions and hard tackles (although in this league, there were limits on slides and hard tackles). It was my first time covering that level of soccer/futbol, and I really had to adjust my response reactions accordingly. Too many times I would see a hard collision on the field, and one player or both would look unconscious and not get up, only to have them "recover" after the referee had made their ruling and assessed penalties. Lordy.

Anyway, at the final game of the weekend, there was an elevated level of chippiness, and there was one particularly hard tackle in the first half. I couldn't tell if the tackle was on the ball or the player's foot, but the referee called it a side-out throw-in for the attacking team. The defending team was pretty agitated about the call, and I heard the captain and coach of the other team yelling to the throw-in player, "give it to the other team, give it back to them to make it even." It looked like they thought it was a close call too, and wanted to give up the ball to keep it from being a problem. Nice.

Unfortunately, right before halftime the other team got a red card and ejection, and things went downhill from there. They ended up getting DQ'ed and losing. At least the one team tried to keep them in the game...