Quote:
Originally Posted by fredr123
Two things have bothered me about our athletes' performances thus far:
1. I find it hard to believe all of our athletes are leaving it all out there and giving their best performance. I don't have any numbers whatsoever to back this up but I bet the number of athletes whose scores at these Olympics are anywhere near the neighborhood of their personal bests is pretty low. I know a few speed skaters who train at the Oval with many of our Olympic speed skaters. These people look up to our Olympic athletes and aspire to be in their position soon. They shake their head at the poor performances we've seen so far. It's not like the gold medalists are setting world records or anything yet our athletes are not only falling short of that mark but they aren't even approaching the level they've been competing at even in the recent past. Sure, you're allowed to have a bad day once in a while. The number of athletes who seem to have had a bad day on the biggest day of their careers is cause for concern.
2. Manuel Osborne-Paradis, Pierre Lueders and others whom I have come to know from the kind words of Donald Sutherland over the past couple months have been pretty disappointing. I doubt they personally had anything to do with becoming part of the CTV hype machine but it would have been great for at least one of those ads to be more than just an ironic reminder of unrealistic expectations in hindsight.
|
As I said before, it's possible to explode yourself by trying too hard as well.
You get off your game plan and away from the things that put you in the top tier, concentrating too much on the medals and not enough on the processes that got you there in the first place.
The alpine team, as an example, seems to be really gunning for the medals and are overly aggressive, hence the epic crashes.
Hollingsworth appeared to be in the same boat. Fastest out of the gate and then mistakes she wouldn't make any other day of the week with the gold in sight.
Our man in the ski cross yesterday had a medal wrapped up and wiped out trying for one level higher, getting nothing in the process.
The men's short-track speed skating team, a very experienced pair of brothers, might have been overly aggressive in setting a pace they couldn't sustain the other night.
I won't do the work but it would be interesting to know how many sea level countries have won Olympic medals in Vancouver versus teams that train at altitude like Canada. The slogginess of the ice at sea level versus altitude seems to be a factor in how certain athletes are able to close out a race. It looks - at a glance - that sea level trained athletes are pulling unexpected results out of the hat. You would think altitude-trained athletes would have an advantage but that doesn't seem to be the case in this particular sport.
I've got no complaints about the level of "try" in Canadian athletes. I think that's silly. There does seem to be room to debate whether or not wanting to win too badly has interfered with the processes that got them there in the first place. That looks very real in where Canada is right now.
I'll say it again. If we're spending $117 million now we should double it going forward.
EDIT: Gary Mason with an unusually mature - for him - response to Canada's performance:
http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centr...3.html?cid=rss
Cowperson