Australia’s performance so far has been a constant debate – did our athletes do enough? Why are we having less gold as compared to our last game? What went wrong? Are the athletes good enough?
Whenever I read articles on people criticising our athletes when they failed to score gold I got annoyed. Humans are judgemental creatures, that’s for sure, otherwise I will not be writing this blog. But sometimes when we judge, are we giving people sufficient space for the benefit of the doubt? Olympics is a world class game. These athletes trained all their lives just for the game and a lot of them didn’t even have the financial support to get them through. I find it very unfair when someone sitting in front of a terminal watching the games, then just put their judgemental thoughts into words and threw them out without understanding all the hardships these athletes went through.
Yes, it will be great if they score gold, but when they are doing their best and their best is just not good enough to pull them through, should we judge? Have we forgotten all the sleeps they lost during these years for training, the financial hardship some of them had gone through, the mental breakdowns that were dealt with privately off the screen and the immense pressure they havdswhen they were out their in the fields, in the pool or at the stadium? It is always easy to judge but are we judging fairly? That is the question.
Being a kid brought up in a traditional Asian family environment, we grew up being judged all the time. We were being judged by our cultural behaviours, our academic merits, our music or sports merits if we took up any of these extra-curricula activities and of course our professions when we finished education. Sometimes I found it hard to swallow when my parents will just went through all the subjects I only scored around the 80s and 70s simply because they are not good enough – yes everything needs to be in the 90s. I am used to it although some people do wonder how we can survive, but I managed. For me the hard to swallow part was not the criticism but the focus on the failures instead of appreciating my efforts. And this applies to our Olympians.
I always maintain the view that if you are going to compete you should aim to win. I am never a big fan of participate just for the sake of participating. Sure I don’t want to give myself pressure but I will do whatever it takes (in a legal and ethical manner) to win if I participate. So I am sure our Olympians will have the same attitude. However, as with anything in life, what you put in does not always materialise into the desire outcome. If they won gold, that’s great, but if not, as long as they gave their best, I think we should appreciate their efforts to try and do their best. Writing articles like “Does blah blah blah still has what it takes?”; “What went wrong with blah blah blah”; “A disappointing blah blah blah with disappointing results” are nothing but mean, inconsiderate and heartless.
The only time I think someone warrants such kind of criticisms is when they didn’t try and just give up. That lack of spirit and respect for what you are doing deserves outrageous criticisms. However, when someone gave his / her very best and got out done by even better competitors; or they gave their very best but their bodies had reached their limits given the circumstance, then we should just leave them alone or even give them our full support no matter what the outcomes were.
It is always easy for us to judge when we were not the people who gave the hard yards and put ourselves out there. However, are we doing good to the world or other people when we do that? I think that is the question I want all those people who put in harsh criticising articles in the media to seriously think about.
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