Battling the Demon of Expectation
Dr Mark Bawden is out in Vancouver with the GB Speed Skating Team. Below are some of his thoughts on the Olympics as he reflects during his downtime.
Battling the great demon of expectation
Throughout the Games there are many hot topics of conversation that fill the downtime that exists around the training and preparation for competition. They spark lots of debate and challenge about what makes a winner in this pressure cooker of an environment. As always most of these topics come back to the world of psychology to find their answers. Today the hot topic was around ‘expectations’ and how on earth elite athletes are able to cope with them.
One of the key challenges that faces an Olympic athlete is ‘how do they manage the expectation of performing on the big stage when the whole World is watching?’ The magic of the Olympics is partly the fact that it only occurs every four years. However, this is also one of the major sources of pressure that the athletes have to battle with. If you fail to deliver a performance at the Games you have a long wait and lots of contemplation time to attempt to make amends.
History is full of examples of athletes who have been expected to walk away with the gold medal but have failed to deliver the goods when it really mattered. How does an athlete deliver their skill when everyone expects them to win? This led to a discussion about possibly the greatest short track speed skater of the modern age and how he battled with the great demon of ‘expectation’.
In 1993 at the age of 17 an unknown Canadian short track speed skater called Marc Gagnon won the overall crown of World champion. In 1994 going into his first Olympics in Lillehammer he was a clear favourite to win a gold. However, he fell over in the semi final of the 500m and could only make it to the B final of the 1000m . As a result of our now GB coach Nicky Gooch getting disqualified in the final of the 1000m and a Canadian skater deciding not to finish the race after a fall, Gagnon was awarded the bronze medal by de-fault. Not the way he would have chosen to win his first individual Olympic medal.
Between 94 and 98 at World Championships, Gagnon picked up 7 out of a possible 12 gold medals and was perceived to be a certain Olympic gold medalist for Nagano.
He went into Nagano as the current World record holder in both the 1000m and the 1500m with the speed skating population expecting him to clean up, yet he failed to win an individual medal at any distance. At the subsequent World championships a mere few weeks later, where expectations of success were somewhat dampened he retained the title as overall World champion with ease. In 1999 with his elusive Olympic individual gold medal still haunting him he decided to quit skating. He 2001 he made his comeback at the World Championships where he again became Champion in the 1500m.
In 2002 Gagnon went into his last Olympics the hot favorite to win gold in both the 1000m and 1500m. In the 1500m he made the final and despite a shaky performance managed to win a bronze medal, a wonderful achievement for any normal athlete but not what was expected from possibly the greatest distance short track skater of all time. In the 1000m he failed to make the final, finishing a very conservative 16th . With retirement so close he could almost touch it, he went into his final distance - the 500m. This was not Gagnon’s strength at all in fact most people were surprised that he managed to make a final. All eyes were actually on Gagnon’s team mate Jonathon Guilmette who was expected to take gold. With one lap to go Gagnon was sat in third place and then out of nowhere he made an amazing overtake past his teammate and managed to hold off the chasing pack to the line. After a decade of disappointment on the Olympic stage he had finally won his elusive gold medal at the very point when expectation from both himself and the rest of the world had left him.
(Click here to be directed to a similar story about Jeremy Wotherspoon).
There is a great irony to expectation and what it does to the brain. The better you get – the more expectation is created to deliver your skill, and the more expectation that is created to deliver your skill the worse you can become. The athlete always has to manage their own personal expectation and also that of the environment around them. If the athlete engages too much in the outcome and the expectations attached to that, it can result in a very ‘emotional’ performance. This is largely because they feel that their ‘ego’ is on line. Many athletes play various mind games in order to minimize the expectation they feel, and subsequently take their ‘ego’ out of the equation. Some will try and use ‘keep it in perspective thoughts’ or simplify what they are doing to the point of trivia (“I skate round in circles for a living”). Others will look to minimize expectations of others by developing imaginary injuries or manufacture a crisis so as to find a reason why ‘this shouldn’t happen’. Anyone who has tried to convince others that they ‘haven’t revised’ before an important exam will understand this method better then most. It simply says “I’m protecting my ego – just in case”. The most productive way to manage expectations appears to be to focus intently on simple processes of what you are trying to do to the point at which the outcome becomes a mere blur in the background of your mind. This enables the logical brain to keep the emotional brain in check long enough to allow you to perform. This coupled with the underpinning beliefs that you can only ‘try your best’ and that the consequences of this performance will not result in ‘death’ appears to be a method that many use to dilute the often weighty feeling of expectation.
At this Olympics there is huge expectation on the Canadian athletes to be the first speed skaters to win an Olympic gold medal on home soil. One of the athletes who have been targeted to achieve this accolade is the speed skater Charles Hamelin. Like Gagnon before him, Hamelin goes into this Olympics as the reigning World cup leader and World champion in the 500m. Hamelin will be Jon Eley’s main rival in this distance. It will be fascinating to see how Hamelin copes with the ‘expectation of a nation’ and whether he is able to use this as a friend or a foe.
