Riffing on Marcel Maus's essay on the gift, Georges Bataille went back to Nietzsche to develop a notion of pure expenditure unrelated to an investment-return economy. The distinction of restricted economy (investment-return) and general economy (pure expenditure) plays a big role in Derrida's writings on the gift (inter alia, Given Time and The Gift of Death), as well as in Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "anti-production" in Anti-Oedipus, which comes back to Nietzsche and the movement of debt.
Obviously there are lots of restricted economy operations in big-time track-and-field, aka "athletics" outside the States, but I've always liked seeing sport, at least in a transcendental Idea sense, as pure expenditure or "ritual sacrifice of excess energy," a phrase I remember reading years ago, but can't seem to find on the web.
In any case, the end of this race, a completely ordinary 800 meter race at the US National Championships in 2007, provides a good actualization (?), example (?), instantiation (?) approximation (?) of pure expenditure or "giving your all."
Skip ahead to 2:27 to see the start of the race, or if you just want the homestretch, go to 4:08. Here's a photo too.
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