The Crying Games

[zico]

I can't ever remember seeing so much crying in the Olympics before. Half the people in Taekwondo burst into tears after their matches, weightlifters crying halfway through the competition because they've pulled off a good lift.

Is it a healthy (and frequent) outpouring of emotion that releases tension, or is it just that a lot of competitors have got their emotions screwed up to fever pitch because coming first is now all that matters. Baron de Coubertin wouldn't be pleased - "it's not the winning, it's the taking part".

Maybe we need a new Olympic motto "Most of you are losers" because a lot of competitors seem to think that getting a silver or bronze is pointless because it means they're only 2nd or 3rd best in the world at their chosen sport.

[moorfield]

I can't ever remember seeing so much crying in the Olympics before. Half the people in Taekwondo burst into tears after their matches, weightlifters crying halfway through the competition because they've pulled off a good lift.

Is it a healthy (and frequent) outpouring of emotion that releases tension, or is it just that a lot of competitors have got their emotions screwed up to fever pitch because coming first is now all that matters. Baron de Coubertin wouldn't be pleased - "it's not the winning, it's the taking part".

Maybe we need a new Olympic motto "Most of you are losers" because a lot of competitors seem to think that getting a silver or bronze is pointless because it means they're only 2nd or 3rd best in the world at their chosen sport.

I wasn't at all convinced by the most decorated American gymnast who copped out of losing today citing "mental health" issues. I'm going out on a limb here, deliberately and I know controversially, and suggest that this is becoming all too much of a misused catch all label of late.

There are some genuinely very very ill people who do need support (I do have family experience, I know). And there are a lot who wear it as a cloak of convenience.

I'll stop there I think.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I can't ever remember seeing so much crying in the Olympics before. Half the people in Taekwondo burst into tears after their matches, weightlifters crying halfway through the competition because they've pulled off a good lift.

Is it a healthy (and frequent) outpouring of emotion that releases tension, or is it just that a lot of competitors have got their emotions screwed up to fever pitch because coming first is now all that matters. Baron de Coubertin wouldn't be pleased - "it's not the winning, it's the taking part".

Maybe we need a new Olympic motto "Most of you are losers" because a lot of competitors seem to think that getting a silver or bronze is pointless because it means they're only 2nd or 3rd best in the world at their chosen sport.

I have an alternative point of view which I'd like to throw into the chat stew please. It could be sleep deprivation? Or if you prefer "jet lag". A lack of sleep or "jet lag" has many symptoms but one is feeling weepy.

AiY

[zico]

I wasn't at all convinced by the most decorated American gymnast who copped out of losing today citing "mental health" issues. I'm going out on a limb here, deliberately and I know controversially, and suggest that this is becoming all too much of a misused catch all label of late.

There are some genuinely very very ill people who do need support (I do have family experience, I know). And there are a lot who wear it as a cloak of convenience.
I'll stop there I think.

It's just a definition of "mental health" issues. People do have mental breakdown if placed for long periods of time in stressful situations they can't cope with - that's just a well-known fact. Until this year, being expected to do very well at a sporting event generally simply didn't generate the kind of stress levels that might trigger breakdowns. There was lots of competitive stress, but it was "good" stress, in that people could control and enjoy the experience of needing to be at the top of their game. However, the new GB girl tennis star (Radacanu) at Wimbledon seemed to have some kind of panic attack on court, Naomi Osaka withdrew citing "mental issues" and now a similar thing has happened with Simone Biles. I remember back in 1998 in the World Cup final when Ronaldo was initially left out of the team, but played, though he seemed to be somewhat sedated, but that was a very isolated incident.

The GB olympic funding scheme targets gold medals, so maybe competitors are thinking if they don't win an expected gold, their friends and teammates will lose their funding to the synchronised drone strike display team or whatever mad new sport is dreamed up for the next Olympics.

[Itsallaguess]

If we think about the huge development and day to day impact of 24-hour social media and other news-based channels since the last Olympics, and mix that huge level of public scrutiny with the Covid-related issues that we've all had to cope with over recent times, it helps to start explain how these youngsters might find themselves feeling a level of pressure that they're finding difficult to cope with during these particular games...

Let's not forget the long-term bubbles these youngsters have been having to live and train under for such a long, long time, so as not to risk picking up an infection that might ruin their chances of competing. What a huge, long term strain that alone must be to have to cope with at such a young age - never mind everything else as well....

There's an article in today's Guardian touching on the social media pressure and the 24-hour news side of things here -

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/27/simone-biles-naomi-osaka-highlight-24-hour-rolling-hell-big-sport-tokyo-olympics

It's easy for those who don't live under such scrutiny to criticise, I suppose, but I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone living in the digital public eye nowadays, and especially when they're of an age that might struggle more than most with the levels of bile that exists in that online sphere....

We're living in a world with no 'off' switch now, and there's a price to pay that we're only just beginning to appreciate....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[bungeejumper]

Naomi Osaka withdrew citing "mental issues" and now a similar thing has happened with Simone Biles. I remember back in 1998 in the World Cup final when Ronaldo was initially left out of the team, but played, though he seemed to be somewhat sedated, but that was a very isolated incident.

No great cricket fan here, but didn't Marcus Trescothick drop out of captaining a 2006 test tour in India because he was stressed out by the travel, and also because he was missing his mum? To his great credit, Trescothick has talked (and written) a lot about his issues with anxiety and mental health. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/ ... -interview

Simone Biles had adopted a different approach before she finally fell apart in public yesterday. She'd been telling the papers for several days that the system was out to get her, because she said the judges were going to mark her down in order to give somebody else a turn in the top spot.

In the event, they didn't need to. But does anybody else notice a strange echo about a claim that the voting system is rigged against you so that you won't be allowed to win?

BJ

[pje16]

If we think about the huge development and day to day impact of 24-hour social media and other news-based channels since the last Olympics, and mix that huge level of public scrutiny with the Covid-related issues that we've all had to cope with over recent times, it helps to start explain how these youngsters might find themselves feeling a level of pressure that they're finding difficult to cope with during these particular games...

Let's not forget the long-term bubbles these youngsters have been having to live and train under for such a long, long time, so as not to risk picking up an infection that might ruin their chances of competing. What a huge, long term strain that alone must be to have to cope with at such a young age - never mind everything else as well....

There's an article in today's Guardian touching on the social media pressure and the 24-hour news side of things here -

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/27/simone-biles-naomi-osaka-highlight-24-hour-rolling-hell-big-sport-tokyo-olympics

It's easy for those who don't live under such scrutiny to criticise, I suppose, but I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone living in the digital public eye nowadays, and especially when they're of an age that might struggle more than most with the levels of bile that exists in that online sphere....

We're living in a world with no 'off' switch now, and there's a price to pay that we're only just beginning to appreciate....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Great post, and I do have sympanthy, but I would like to add that you CAN turn off social Media, nothing forces you to look at it

[bungeejumper]

Nother little quote from Simone Biles, sounding just a teensy bit precious perhaps?

“I also know I’m not having as much fun and I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself. I came in and I felt like I was doing it for other people. So that it hurts my heart that doing what I love has been taken away from me, to please other people.”

Gimme strength. She'll be doing interviews with Oprah Winfrey next.

BJ

[pje16]

I don't use any other social media other than the Lemon and it's always going to be that way and my phone almost always gets turned OFF at 10pm. When I look at the young un's in our office they walk everywhere with a screen 12 inches from their face. Even in a busy high street, there's stuff to see, things going on that you want to observe (traffic being the main thing!)

Likewise, but 11pm not 10pm, for some it's like an illness, they can't leave the phone alone for 5 mins

[dionaeamuscipula]

Nother little quote from Simone Biles, sounding just a teensy bit precious perhaps?

“I also know I’m not having as much fun and I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself. I came in and I felt like I was doing it for other people. So that it hurts my heart that doing what I love has been taken away from me, to please other people.”

Gimme strength. She'll be doing interviews with Oprah Winfrey next.

BJ

Have you any idea at all of what Biles has been going through in the last 3 years, including having her medical records leaked on line and a prime position in one of the largest sexual abuse cases in American history?

Have you any idea at all of what its like to be an elite athlete? About the whereabouts system?

Have you any idea what its like to have the expectations of a whole nation sitting on your shoulders?

DM

[servodude]

Gimme strength. She'll be doing interviews with Oprah Winfrey next.

BJ

Wheesht! Just mentioning Oprah is what it normally takes to wake that scrote Piers Morgan!

If you're not careful he'll be along to mansplain why this lass should "Just shut up, learn her place and get back in the kitchen. Where she can drink her bleach quietly like the gymnasts we had in my day"
- or some other pish.

I'm hoping she can get herself back on track in time for the individual events; on a good day she's exceptional

- sd

[dionaeamuscipula]

We're living in a world with no 'off' switch now, and there's a price to pay that we're only just beginning to appreciate....

There's always a way to turn the switch off - the trouble is most young folks don't know how to - or want to. Fear of missing out I guess.

Young people live on their phones in a way us oldies can barely comprehend.

I think if you're even vaguely famous, its all about building an online brand / social media presence these days and that's probably down to their management team developing a 'strategy' to make you (them) wealthy.

It's all about the money. money. money.

It is for some people. But don't forget most professional athletes aren't rich or anything like rich. Most of them aren't really very famous either.

For many sports the Olympics is the absolute pinnacle. For two weeks every four years they are splashed all over the TV if they are successful. Trashed on social media if they fall short of our expectations of them. Forgotten a month later, for the most part. That gives them a tiny window in which to try and get some return for the years and years of effort they have put in. These are not people who have a comms manager controlling their social media output. They might just have an agent, but it is as likely as not that their mum or their dad do it, because they aren't a big enough name to get signed up to one of the big sports agencies. And we are talking here about the people at the very, very top of their sports. Those just underneath the very, very top don't even have that opportunity. Yet those at the very top (as opposed to the very, very top) have done the exact same work, starting at 9 or 10, and by 14 or 15 doing, in some sports, 15 hours a week of training, 6 days a week, up at 5 am to train before school, missing out on nights out with their friends... These people are not doing it for the money, they are doing it for all sorts of other good reasons, mostly to try to be the very best they can be. In fact usually they are paying for the privilege.

It was so lovely and sweet to see James Guy in complete bits the other day when Team GB won gold and silver in the men's individual 200m freestyle. I would bet most people outside swimming would never have heard of him even a week ago, but he is one of the world's top swimmers. He was emotional not because of his own performance but because he was so happy for the success of his team mates. And that is despite the fact that James could easily have been in that race himself, fighting for medals, had it not been for the fact that there is a limit of two from each nation in each event. In fact the swim he did in the relay today, in which he finally got his own gold medal, would have been good enough for a bronze* in the individual event. James isn't doing it for the money, he's doing it for love, for passion, for pride. He's not doing it to build a brand, you've never seen him in a pizza advert, he probably gets free gear from a sportswear manufacturer and lottery funding, but probably not a huge heap more. And frankly, if he now *does* get to be in a pizza advert, I for one will be really happy for him.


DM (looking forward to another 5am alarm on Friday, since parents also have to put the hours in)

*for technical reasons, a relay leg isn't directly comparable to an individual swim, but the point remains valid

[bungeejumper]

Nother little quote from Simone Biles, sounding just a teensy bit precious perhaps?

“I also know I’m not having as much fun and I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself. I came in and I felt like I was doing it for other people. So that it hurts my heart that doing what I love has been taken away from me, to please other people.”

Gimme strength. She'll be doing interviews with Oprah Winfrey next.

Have you any idea at all of what Biles has been going through in the last 3 years, including having her medical records leaked on line and a prime position in one of the largest sexual abuse cases in American history?

Have you any idea at all of what its like to be an elite athlete? About the whereabouts system?

Have you any idea what its like to have the expectations of a whole nation sitting on your shoulders?

Did you mean to connect that little diatribe in any way with what I wrote?

But no, since you ask, I've never been female, never been molested, and never been an elite athlete with the expectations of a whole nation on my shoulders. All I saw was someone who walked out on her team when they were under pressure. (And was later persuaded to come back into the stadium, to her credit.) That's pressure, all right. But it's not leadership.

BJ

[didds]

but didn't Marcus Trescothick drop out of captaining a 2006 test tour in India because he was stressed out by the travel, and also because he was missing his mum?

BJ

Yup. Jonathan Trott left an Ashes tour early on with similar issues.

Add to the mix several other rufty tufty sports types with similar issues eg Joe Marler, England prop forward.

I'df suggest until any of us are good enough to be in such exalted and stratospheric leevls of sporting global ability and competetion we probably can't comment.

[terminal7]

Wheesht! Just mentioning Oprah is what it normally takes to wake that scrote Piers Morgan!

If you're not careful he'll be along to mansplain why this lass should "Just shut up, learn her place and get back in the kitchen. Where she can drink her bleach quietly like the gymnasts we had in my day"

Clearly servodude you missed the great man's article today in the Daily Hate on line.

T7

[swill453]

Wheesht! Just mentioning Oprah is what it normally takes to wake that scrote Piers Morgan!

If you're not careful he'll be along to mansplain why this lass should "Just shut up, learn her place and get back in the kitchen. Where she can drink her bleach quietly like the gymnasts we had in my day"

Clearly servodude you missed the great man's article today in the Daily Hate on line.

As the DM Reporter tweeted:

We all knew it was coming and we all knew it was going to be bad, but telling a young girl suffering from mental issues she's let everyone around her down is an absolute new f*****g low.

REMINDER: This is from a man who stormed off set when a weatherman said a couple of things he didn't like.

Scott.

[XFool]

Nother little quote from Simone Biles, sounding just a teensy bit precious perhaps?

Gimme strength. She'll be doing interviews with Oprah Winfrey next.

Have you any idea at all of what Biles has been going through in the last 3 years, including having her medical records leaked on line and a prime position in one of the largest sexual abuse cases in American history?

Have you any idea at all of what its like to be an elite athlete? About the whereabouts system?

Have you any idea what its like to have the expectations of a whole nation sitting on your shoulders?

Did you mean to connect that little diatribe in any way with what I wrote?

But no, since you ask, I've never been female, never been molested, and never been an elite athlete with the expectations of a whole nation on my shoulders. All I saw was someone who walked out on her team when they were under pressure. (And was later persuaded to come back into the stadium, to her credit.) That's pressure, all right. But it's not leadership.

BJ

Simone Biles has already told us what the problem is - or at least what the effects are, 'the twisters'. That is an inability to track ones' orientation in space while executing multiple bodily twists in a gymnastic display.

What value then should we place on cynical comments on Simone Biles, of someone whose greatest daily risk is likely to be a paper cut from reading today's Daily Telegraph? For her the risk is of losing track of spatial orientation and landing incorrectly; where incorrectly, includes possibly landing on ones head, breaking your neck and spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Mukhina

I reckon there are bovids with greater awareness and sensitivity to others than some posters on these boards.

[servodude]

Wheesht! Just mentioning Oprah is what it normally takes to wake that scrote Piers Morgan!

If you're not careful he'll be along to mansplain why this lass should "Just shut up, learn her place and get back in the kitchen. Where she can drink her bleach quietly like the gymnasts we had in my day"

Clearly servodude you missed the great man's article today in the Daily Hate on line.

As the DM Reporter tweeted:

We all knew it was coming and we all knew it was going to be bad, but telling a young girl suffering from mental issues she's let everyone around her down is an absolute new f*****g low.

REMINDER: This is from a man who stormed off set when a weatherman said a couple of things he didn't like.

Scott.

I haven't seen what he's written - but it sounds like it's true to form.
Perhaps she ghosted him once?!

I do hope that the ignorant mumpsimus routine he pedals is becoming transparent and tiresome to everyone; that might encourage them in charge to do whatever the "journalistic" equivalent of kicking him upstairs is

-sd

[bungeejumper]

Simone Biles has already told us what the problem is - or at least what the effects are, 'the twisters'. That is an inability to track ones' orientation in space while executing multiple bodily twists in a gymnastic display.

What value then should we place on cynical comments on Simone Biles, of someone whose greatest daily risk is likely to be a paper cut from reading today's Daily Telegraph? For her the risk is of losing track of spatial orientation and landing incorrectly; where incorrectly, includes possibly landing on ones head, breaking your neck and spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair?

All good points, XFool. There are special dangers in gymnastics, and the importance of getting everything millimetre-precise under extreme time pressure are probably unrivalled. (Although there are plenty of other sports where it's pretty life-and-death as well. Motorcycle racing and mountaineering come to mind. ) But AIUI, Ms Biles was annoyed that the judges had refused (in advance) to award points for something called the Yurchenko double pike, which was a known neck-breaker. And which she'd done once in a competition, and which she had been intent on doing again. Nobody wants a body count in the Olympics, and they'd have had to build that into their deliberations, right or wrong.

As to whether that added to Ms Biles's enormous tension on the day, we can only guess. You are absolutely right to draw attention to her previous mental torment, caused by years of sexual abuse for which the perpetrator is currently serving 175 years in jail. But we are on a rather different slippery slope if we start making special allowances for individual sports competitors because of their personal backgrounds. (Absent the paralympics, of course.) If she was there to be the team leader, that's what she didn't quite manage to be.

All the same, she was in a truly appalling situation, and only a super-bovine would feel no empathy at all. Others here have remarked on the peculiar stresses that confront modern sportspeople, and I doubt that many of us know the half of what they have to go through. It seems realistic enough to attribute some of the controversial things she's recently said to her highly-stressed state of mind, but at the end of the day she's a sporting legend and she'll recover soon enough. Her talk of early retirement is surely premature? I certainly hope so.

BJ

[didds]

but didn't Marcus Trescothick drop out of captaining a 2006 test tour in India because he was stressed out by the travel, and also because he was missing his mum?

Yup. Jonathan Trott left an Ashes tour early on with similar issues.

And now Ben Stokes.

https://www.ecb.co.uk/news/2202365