News Flash: Losing isn’t fun

We're all watching... and taking photos on iPads

Ok so I know I’m not breaking any new ground by declaring that no one likes losing. But the thing is that how much losing sucks relates to the context of the loss itself. One example of this is Bill Simmons’ Levels of Losing, but that’s not specifically what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about is differences between losing at an event like the Olympics and losing, for example, a footy game.

When your team loses a footy game or whatever sport you hold dear, of course it sucks and you’d much prefer to win, but in context it’s usually not that hard to swallow. If you follow a team doing well and they drop a game or too, well it’s a long season and no one goes undefeated (usually). If you follow a team that sucks, well at least they are developing young players, implementing a new culture, whatever the guys running the club are telling you they are doing to keep you going while they suck. Plus if you don’t win the championship, there is always next year and the year after that and the year after that.

The Olympics is very different. First and foremost, it’s every four years. Yes there is the Winter Olympics too, but most countries seem to be more into one than the other. So it’s easy to explain why there is so much interest and excitement and pressure on each event when there isn’t a next year. It’s not just the athletes who have to wait that long for their next opportunity; it’s all the fans watching too.

See the thing with the Olympics is that for fans, unless you are Chinese, it’s 99.9% losing. In most events, even if your country has someone who qualified, they are just making up the numbers or maybe making the final and having a very respectable finish, but not really contending for gold. Sometimes I find it easiest and more fun to watch events Australia didn’t even qualify for, like most weightlifting weight divisions, so I can simply enjoy watching the competition and not really feel any tension or pressure about the result.

Now that 99.9% losing is expected due to the amount of events in the Olympics and for a country like Australia we don’t mind it as long as every once in a while we do get that sweet taste of victory. Eventually you become accustomed to a certain level of success, so no one expects Australia to compete with the Chinese or Americans on the medal tally, but certainly to finish top 10 and push for top 5. So when the Olympics turns out the way it has so far, things go ugly very quickly.

Without those semi-regular victories to enjoy between watching the guys and girls in green and gold come last or simply out of the running, it becomes difficult to continue to cheer on the entire Olympic team.

See the dirty secret about sport, even individual sports, is that fans don’t really care about the athlete themselves for the most part. Especially in sports you aren’t living and dying with each week like you would for your football team. What fans are supporting is what the athlete represents, be it the local team or the entire country. James Magnussen isn’t being supported by the nation because he is James Magnussen, he is being supported because he is the Australian representative in the 100m freestyle (and maybe in his case because he is good looking). When he showed over the past couple of years that he was the best in the World at that event, it built up the hopes of a nation that he would be one of those few and far between tastes of victory. That’s why some of the comments I have seen about James and other Aussie athletes who didn’t win don’t surprise me.

On the scoreboard there is no difference between Magnussen winning silver and someone like young Jessica Fox winning silver in the canoeing, but it’s all about the expectation built up over months or years prior. Fans don’t really have a right to expect anything, but it is human nature that they will. So we celebrate an unexpected silver medal in one sense and get disappointed by “winning” an unexpected silver in another.

For me personally, I would celebrate if the Australian Boomers won a bronze medal more than I would celebrate any gold medal we could win in everything else.

Is it fair on the athletes who prove they should be considered the favourite to win gold that we malign them if they don’t, whilst we celebrate others overachieving to the same result? Of course it isn’t. So I really hope James Magnussen and others don’t feel betrayed by their own country, but fans are selfish and it’s not something I see changing any time soon.

Now if only we could actually win something sometime soon, we’d all feel a little bit better.

Go Australia.

The Crashes

Searching for answers

So we are now a couple of days into the Olympics and both Australia and Great Britain (sorry... Team GB I’m supposed to say right?) have had some disappointing results. For the Brits, the Men’s Road Race didn’t go as planned when they put all their eggs in the Cavendish and no one was going to let that one happen. They would have been better served to at least send one team member, maybe Millar, into the breakaway and give themselves another option when the inevitable lack of help eventuated.

Without medalling, Stuart O’Grady had a wonderful ride and finished 6^th, a great effort for a great statesman for the sport and Australia. The Brits just fell short of gold in the Women’s Road Race but couldn’t get past the amazing Marianne Vos from The Netherlands.

Both Australia and Great Britain have been disappointed in the pool as well. For the Brits, Rebecca Adlington couldn’t grab gold in the 400m freestyle and for Australia, I think we all know what happened in the 4x100 freestyle relay.

I can’t pretend to know for sure why the team failed to meet expectations. Were expectations of gold that unreasonable when we had the favourite and one of the other contenders for gold in the individual 100m? Not to mention two other highly rated swimmers in the other two spots. Was it all mental after there was such an air of expectancy that they couldn’t handle the pressure?

I think we’ll only really know the answers to that when we see what the Missile and Roberts can do in the individual 100m. I just hope they come out for redemption as opposed to breaking under the spotlight.

Meanwhile the Australian teams for the most part have not gotten off to the best of starts. The Hockeyroos, the Boomers, Men’s Volleyball, Men’s Water Polo all lost. I’m probably forgetting someone else too. The Opals won as they were expected to and whilst I didn’t see the game, I’m told it was a shaky performance. I expect them to find form and go into the gold medal match as a legitimate 50/50 chance.

I must admit the relay upset has shaken my confidence in Australia reaching double digit gold medal, but I guess that can all be fixed if the boys make up for it in individual events. I hope by the end of the swimming we take at least 4 gold from the pool. Emily Seebohm can certainly help out with that target tonight/tomorrow morning.

Also, yeah it goes without saying, but how good are China? They have kicked these Games off on fire. Every time I change the channel, which is a lot, there is a Chinese kid not only winning, but dominating their event. Weightlifting, shooting, diving, swimming... they just keep coming. I guess it’s a reflection on where we are headed as a planet in general. I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted online personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

I’m exhausted already. So many more nights to go.