It’s the Olympics!
The 23rd
Winter Olympics closes today and we have been treated to some of the most
exciting sporting events over the past seventeen days. I love the Olympics;
both summer and winter. The events are exciting and our national pride swells
when the U.S. Athletes succeed. We also get to witness how athletes respond to
what many see as failure. When my children were young and we watched the events
of the summer and winter Olympics together one of the most often phrases I
would say when someone would not live up to the hype that the media had
portrayed them to be; was: “It’s the Olympics”!
The
Olympics bring a stress unlike no other sporting event. The pressure for an
athlete to win the gold medal is so intense that many athletes fail to live up
to the expectations of others. This past two weeks were no exception. There
were many that did not win gold, and many that did; some that were not expected
to. In the days leading up to the Olympics in PheongChang, South Korea we were
introduced to the Athletes that were supposed to be the best in their sports
and would certainly win gold for the U.S. The Washington Post’s Headline for
today (Sunday, February 25, 2018) was “With 23 Medal, Team USA falls short of
expectations at PyeongChang Olympics”. In the article they mentioned that the
USA was projected to win anywhere from 25-59 medals so on the surface it
appeared the article was saying that Team USA was a failure; far from it. Alan
Ashley, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s chief of sport performance, was quoted as
saying:
“I pay
attention to the medals, too, but I also pay attention to the team, and we’ve
got an amazing team. I feel like there were a lot of really, really close
finishes. It was not as though we were in situations where you say, ‘Oh, we’re
going to do this great achievement,’ and then we were 20th, 40th, 70th,
whatever. Instead, we have this huge group of athletes that was this far away from being on the
podium.”
“American
athletes finished in either fourth, fifth or sixth place here 35 times,
potential medals if the U.S. Olympian was a split-second faster or perhaps
impressed a judge just a bit more. I think we can take those fourth through
sixth places and help convert them to somebody’s dream of standing on the
podium.” (Washington
Post)
Many of
these fourth, fifth, or sixth places were only hundredths of a second slower
than those that were on the podium. Sometime we feel that if they did not make
the podium they failed. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? They made it to the OLYMPICS while
we sit at home and criticize their performances? One person in the Washington
Post’s article’s comment section reminded us: “the person that came in 104th
in the biathlon was better than the other 7.5 billion people on the planet”. The
majority of humanity have no clue what it takes to make it to the Olympics, or
what it really takes to make it to the podium. Even if they did understand they
would not be willing to make the sacrifice that it takes to get there. I was a
distance runner in high school (and a pretty good one) and my coach told me
that I had the potential to go to the Olympics. The only problem was I was not willing
to put in the hours needed to go from being a good high school athlete to develop
what was needed in college let alone the Olympics. I love what Lindsey Vonn
said when asked about how she felt about her performance at the 2018 Winter
Olympics. She called the expectations surrounding gold medals “pretty out of
whack.” And then went on to say:
“They’re
not necessarily what the Olympics are all about,” she said. “The Olympics are a
unifying event, one that has profound impact on the entire world, so to
quantify it in how many medals you have, I think, is not appropriate and
doesn’t respect the athletes and what they’ve put in to be at these Games. We
are all athletes and want to win, and we do our best but sometimes it is not it
is not what we want.”
Lindsey
said she had given her all in her races and felt she was successful even though
she did not win gold as everyone expected of her. She was there to do her best
for her grandfather who had fought in the Korean War and had passed away last
November. The athletes of the 2018 Winter games like many other games are there
competing for different reasons and often they are there in memory of other
athletes or family members. The US Men’s Four-man Bobsled Teams were there
racing in memory of Steven Holcomb, one of their team members from the past two
Olympics, that passed away last May.
Nathan
Chan and most of the other members of the US Figure Skating Team did not live
up to the hype that the media had portrayed for them. I loved it when the
commentators would introduce a team member as being perfect in all their
performances and had never fallen; then when they would fall and everyone would
be shocked. “It’s the Olympics” I would say. Then they would come back and be
spectacular once the pressure was off.
Some of
the best moments were from athletes that were not expected to win but did. One
of those was Ester Ledeka from the Czech Republic who had never finished better
than 19th in the Women’s Super-G – she won Gold! NBC had crowned the
winner already and said that the others that were yet to compete had no chance
of winning so they ended their coverage of that event and went on to another
race. Then there is the US Men’s Curling Team that were almost out of the
running because of losses in the preliminaries that came back an won gold,, the
US’s first ever. I loved the US Women’s Hockey Team that for the fourth time
went into the gold medal match with four-time gold medal winners, Team Canada.
The last time they beat Canada was 20 years ago in 1998 but that did not stop
them from achieving their dream. Then there is Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall
who won gold, the first ever for Team USA, in the cross country team sprint
event.
Every
Olympics has those memorable moments, sometimes it is due to less than expected
performances, but most of the time it is from those moments when the athletes
rise above their own abilities and expectations and become Olympic champions. This
year was the first time ever for a bobsled team from Nigeria and the first time
ever an athlete from Jamaica competed in the skeleton race. The women’s Nigerian
bobsled team can in 20 out of 20 and the Jamaican Skeleton athlete came in
last, but to see them smile at the end of the race you would have thought they
had won gold. To me, every olympic athletes are champions and should be
recognized as such. They are the best of the best and the sacrifice they have
made to represent their country should bring them honor and respect after all
it is the Olympics.
Your
comments and questions are welcome.
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