Watch the video above: pride and pressure are two emotions that must be contained in order to excel at the Olympics
SASKATOON – Pride and pressure, two emotions Olympic athletes feel when representing their country, are two things that must be contained in order to excel, according to University of Saskatchewan experts.
U of S Huskies coach Lisa Thomaidis knows what comes with being a part of the Olympics. In 2012, she was in London as an assistant on Team Canada’s women’s basketball team.
“We hadn’t been to the Olympics for a number of years, so it was a fantastic opportunity and experience to get there, certainly once we got there, there was pressure, you want to perform at your best at the biggest event,” Thomaidis said.
Being the last team to qualify for the London games and making it to the quarter-finals, Thomaidis felt they left everything out on the court.
She knows for all the athletes in Sochi, the physiological preparation is key.
“The pressure that you’re going to face is something that you have never experienced before, you can rehearse it, you can talk about it, you can think about it,” Thomaidis said.
Around 220 Canadian athletes are competing in Sochi.
IN DEPTH: Beyond the Podium
“To do your best you need pressure, you need a certain amount of anxiety, if you don’t have enough you’re not going to do anything,” said Dr. Gerald Farthing, a U of S psychology professor.
“If you have too much you’re going to cloud cautiousness, you can’t perform at your peak.”
The winter Olympics only come around every four years, when you look at a lifetime of training and sacrifice, not reaching the podium can be devastating.
“When you win that game or that championship, that’s the one time you don’t actually for the most part go back and reflect on what you need to do better but for most athletes all the time they’re told what they did wrong, very rarely what they did right,” said Jason Weber, U of S college of kinesiology human performance centre coordinator.
Sochi, like all Olympics, are emotional roller-coasters. The athletes who keep on an even keel are the ones most likely to wear the medals.
After winning 26 medals in 2010, and with nine already, the speculation has begun on a new Canadian record haul. Talk about pressure.
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