IIs sport for me? You start to wonder. Ahead of the Olympics, I spoke with Andy Hodge, one of the greatest American rowers of all time. He told me how he fought to compete in Rio, his third Olympics, while plagued by injuries and illness. “Every day I was prepared to break down,” he said, which helped him come up with what he calls “the psychology of comfort.” It was this: “You keep going until you break down, and then you’ve done enough.” Comfort? Well, if you’ve reached a stage where breaking down is even remotely comforting, you’re living in a world most of us don’t live in, and living a life most doctors would not recommend. At the start line in Rio, Hodge said to himself, “I’m going to go and actually break down. This is my only mission for today.” And a few minutes later, he won his third Olympic gold medal.
People often say the Olympics have the power to encourage kids to take up sports, and that’s great, but there’s a bit of a paradox here: do we really want our kids to be as passionate about sports as the people whose talent and dedication we admire?
While covering the rowing race from Paris, I couldn’t stop thinking about Hodge’s broken body. Watching the British pair Tom George and Oliver Wyn-Griffiths overtake me just before the finish line, despite leading the entire race, gave me a new thought. Apart from what this must be doing to the athletes’ bodies, I began to wonder if there was any benefit to us as spectators. Stress is real and relentless, especially at Olympic time. After yelling at horses all day at the Galway races, I decided to have a quiet beer, only to find myself yelling at Daniel Wiffen, the gold medal-winning swimmer in the 800 meters, on TV. I wonder what the boy has suffered physically and mentally over the years. I can’t stop hearing Michael Phelps’ famous lament that his life is all about eating, sleeping and swimming and not much else.
And the stresses pile up on us as spectators about sports indoors and outdoors, in and on the water, throwing things, catching things, hitting things, winning and losing things. It’s a sport that I only get interested in once every four years, so I barely understand it. It’s a sport I can’t imagine anyone being cruel about. Take synchronized diving, for example. Who would watch divers do incredible twists and turns and flips and think, “Yeah, let’s pair them up and do miracles together and deduct points if they’re not perfectly synchronized?” What are we going to do to these people, and to the rest of us who watch through our fingers?
One moment I’m in tears watching a Chinese girl bounce beautifully off a trampoline and then jumping from the ceiling in joy as Britain’s Bryony Page wins gold. I try to get away from it all by taking my mum somewhere in the car, but we end up listening to Croatia v Greece water polo on Croatian radio, a sport neither of us know the rules of, and we end up stuck on the M1 cursing the referee’s decision as much as the traffic. Again, this is not healthy. And the very weekend the Olympic agony ends, the English football season starts. Where do I put my energy? I’m looking for something to make me feel better, but nothing is coming to mind.
