Caught the last few minutes of panorama and was expecting some serious malpractice to be unearthed about pressure in elite sport and for athlete allegations about bullying to be substantiated. Not sure what to make of it. What I actually saw a narrative about how the ‘winner takes all mentality is bad’, how expecting to maintain weight and performance to win medals puts athletes under undue pressure.
I was left thinking that if these athletes cannot maintain the attributes and perform at the level expected to beat elite athletes from all across the world, why are they complaining about pressure. Basically the program and the athletes who were complaining were saying that elite sports are too results driven. Exactly...too results driven, as though elite sport is played because results don’t matter. How do these up and coming athletes think team GB became the second highest medal winning team in the world, after US, punching well above it’s weight. Was it by following a ‘loser takes all mentality’ or by being driven by something other than results. Where does this culture of mediocrity stop? Someone needs to tell American, Chinese and Australian athletes that at the next olympics, they need to bring their ‘runner up takes all’ mentality in order to pacify those who do not believe in results.