Rio Olympics 2016: Is an Australian culture of mediocrity behind our medal choke?
What happens when the choke goes beyond a joke?
Should Australians be paying $40 million to get just three gold medals, four silver and three bronze in the pool?
If each swimmer performed their 2016 best at the Games, we would have won five gold, eight silver and five bronze.
So on any count, a lot of money was spent on a pretty average outcome.
Perhaps Olympic veteran Shane Gould is right.
One of the problems, as she sees it, is our culture of mediocrity that awards medals for participation in schools.
As Gould — who is one of our greatest ever Olympic swimmers — told Radio National this morning, “maybe we need to rethink schools giving out ribbons for fifth place”.
I can see where she is coming from.
When it comes to the Olympics, all that really counts is the medals. That’s how we measure success.
No one cares how many individuals make their finals, or how many get placed in the top half of the heats, or how many come fifth or better in the semis.
If you don’t get a medal, you’re a loser in Olympic terms.
But this culture of winning isn’t replicated within schools and elsewhere. My daughter’s footy team last year didn’t officially keep scores (even though all the kids sure did.)
At athletics carnivals, there’s prizes for kids taking part, not for those who come first, second and third.
Or, alternatively, at such occasions there’s so many heats and so many races with so few kids that every child wins a ribbon anyway. While this may make some poor performers go home happy — such as the child who places third in a race of three kids — it’s not really engendering a culture of sporting excellence.
Best pictures of the week in Rio
Now, we can stand up for the swimmers and say the conditions were tough in Rio, and some were ill, and some were clearly just battling perfectly understandable nerves.
But at the end of the day, the Olympics is all about individuals pulling out superhuman efforts when it counts; it’s about putting all the noise and distractions aside and getting the job done.
And it’s fair to say some of the members of the swimming team let us down, and let themselves down.
When it really counted they simply weren’t able to perform at their peak.
Of course there were exceptions to this, such as Mack Horton and Kyle Chalmers, who were both individual gold medal winners. But others who were tipped to win big — such as the Campbell sisters and Cameron McEvoy — didn’t measure up.
I do think the way these swimmers performed outside of the pool was exemplary. I particularly admire McEvoy for his praise of Chalmers, and the Campbells for their honesty in post-swim interviews.
These are clearly very fine people and great role models.
But $40 million is a lot to spend when some of the biggest achievements took place out of the water and off the dais.
Bronte Campbell said sometimes it’s the “trying that matters”. At the Olympics this isn’t true. At this level it’s fair for the public to expect athletes at least perform at their personal best levels.
Spending $40 million trying rather than succeeding probably isn’t going to cut it with Australian taxpayers.