Swimmer Lilly King rightfully went off on the general sporting audience for belittling the accomplishments of the silver and bronze medalists in these games. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/olympics/lilly-king-slams-bull-5bexpletive-5d-mentality-of-not-celebrating-silver-and-bronze-medals-at-olympics/ar-AAMKAPV
The attitude that only gold matters is rampant throughout all
the global cultures, there have been trolls on the Chinese social media platform
Weibo taking the Chinese athletes to task for not earning more gold, even as
China is leading the gold count.
King is correct in her indignation concerning the attitude
from the folks back home, and it is admirable that she was strong enough to speak
her truth. It is difficult to even make it on the USA swimming team, let alone
make the finals of these games. Of course, that has never stopped people from
spouting off before.
Part of the general public’s cognitive dissonance is their
understanding of the purpose of the Olympic games. The Olympic motto, as it was
amended on July 20, 2021 became: Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together”. The addition of the word
together reminds everyone that these games are meant to bring the world
together in celebration of competition amongst all nations. The focus on
earning a gold puts the focus on the winning and not on the competing. The
emphasis is of course human, we look at competition as a means to an end, that
the sole purpose of competition is to win at all costs rather than in the comradery
of competing with the world.
The other
influence on our thought process is that most think of winning as a domination
of the opponent, a declaration of being the best of the best period. In
reality, the Olympic competition is not formatted towards selecting the best of
the best for all time. The Olympics are formatted to create a specific opportunity,
at a specific time, demanding a concentrated effort by the athletes to perform
under a high stress environment. It is selecting the best at a moment in time.
Which introduces a large amount of uncertainty to the proceedings as well as mental
pressures on the athletes under stressful conditions beyond that of normal
competition. It is not just another championship, another meet, another series
of games. It is the Olympics.
There are many ways to determine the winners in the sporting
world. Each format affects the nature of winning. The amount of time that
elapses between each stage of competition also affects that nature, whether we
pay attention to it or not.
In the world of the NBA, NHL, MLB, and MLS, each stage of
the head-to-head competition between teams are divided into a best of format,
where teams are required to compete in a predetermined series of odd number of
games and the one who wins over 50% of the predetermined number of games is the
winner. This format ensures that the best team wins, without doubt. If you can
beat your opponent more often than your opponent can beat you, the nature of the win is unequivocal. The probability of the underdog triumphing over
the favorite is minimal, if all goes as planned, i.e. discounting the occurrence
of injury etc.
In the Olympics format, as in the in the Super Bowl, college
basketball, and most other collegiate sports, it is the bracket play format. The
probability of the underdog winning is much greater because if you are not at
the top of your game at that point, in that space, your chances of winning is
greatly reduced. In sporting lore, we talk about having a puncher’s chance, this
is the situation where the puncher increases their probability of upending the
expected results. We, as fans, look forward to the upsets, whether it is
because of one team overachieving, the other team underachieving, or whether it
was just by fluke; the results stand forever, there are no mulligans. This is
why we all love March Madness as we live for the spectacle of the lower seed
beating the higher seed.
While the college basketball March Madness is held over a
month, and the NCAA volleyball playoffs for almost all divisions are held over
three weeks with each team playing two matches every week, the Olympics are much
more compressed: two weeks of competition with the first week devoted to pool
play every other day, while the second
week is planned for sudden death bracket play.
The Olympic schedule is super compressed for all sports
because the schedule for the entire enterprise is two weeks. As a comparison,
the Volleyball Nations League takes place over six weeks and the teams playing
three matches a week on three consecutive days.
In some ways the consecutive days of competition and the week-to-week travelling
makes the tournament challenging, but each team is given the freedom of
changing the rosters from week-to-week. While the roster is set for the
Olympics, with designated alternates waiting outside of the Olympic Village if injuries
occur.
Most of the general public does not understand nor care that
the format of the contest, the format of the selection process, and the nature
of athletics, has an impact on the results of the competition. The athletes are asked to perform at a
predetermined time every four years, and they have planned their training so that they peak in those two weeks. You cannot afford to have a bad day. A bad day
in those two weeks means that all the training, learning, and effort are impacted
and competing at the highest level during those two weeks may not happen as planned.
It also means that there is a large amount of uncertainty in
the contests. Depending on the sport, the winner may not be the best of the
best for all time, instead they had achieved their best performance at that
moment in time at that designated place, as planned. They need to be the best
at dealing with their own human nature towards pessimism as the competition
evolves, the best at maintaining their personal “flow” at all times, and they
need to have the best athletic reactions while under stress, for those two
weeks. Indeed, the gold medal winners may also need to be the luckiest out of
all the competitors in those two weeks.
Those factors make significance of recognizing the top
finishers more important. In examining the great number of things going right,
the massive amount of uncertainty that happens in a single elimination format,
it is very plausible that any one of the top competitors could have won the
gold. Depending on the circumstances, environment, and a myriad of factors, one
can arguably say that even those competitors outside of the top three could
have won it all. There are too many factors that must go right in order for one
person or team to win it all.
The cliché of just making it into the Olympics puts you at
the pinnacle of your chosen sport is true, because you have a chance to compete
if you are just present. Getting a medal at the Olympics means that you have been able to not only train physically
but excel at maintaining your mental composure while successfully processing
the challenges presented to you in a compressed two-week period. Being the top
three also doesn’t mean that lady luck did not smile upon you, it means that
lady luck gave you enough margin to put you at the top three; and that, is
worthy of celebration.
