Eimear Ryan: Sport is rewarding precisely because it’s so hard and disappointing
Rhys McClenaghan reacts following his performance in the men's pommel horse final at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre during the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. A misplaced finger ended his medal chances. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
I've been thinking a lot lately about losing, or maybe more accurately, about the ratio of success to failure in the sporting life. Maybe it’s because I’m working on a long project about sport and reflecting on my own career; maybe it’s also because I’m about to turn 35 and know that my viable seasons are numbered.
When you think about it — what a rare thing victory is. That’s part of what makes it precious, of course. I’ve won plenty of matches in my time but few titles, since it only takes one loss to derail a campaign. Statistically speaking, it’s true for most players that you will lose more years than you win (unless you play your club football with Carnacon, or your inter-county with Dublin). And yet we keep coming back, year after year.
We keep returning to something that causes us as much hurt as joy. Anyone who plays sport knows that feeling of waking up the day after a loss with a belly full of rocks. Last year, I hit a poor wide in a county semi-final, a game we lost by a few points. It took me a solid week to forgive myself. I’m not sure if this is a universal thing or just my own brand of anxiety, but the mistakes I make in games seem to live on in my memory in slow-motion high definition, while the good things I do can be recalled only as a blur.
Sometimes I feel that sporting disappointment is a narrative we don’t talk about enough. In sports books or movies, failure is often only the prelude to the ultimate story of success, of how the athlete dusted themselves down and showed their resilience to emerge victorious in the end. But what if there is no triumph at the end? What if you don’t get to bow out at your peak? Or worse — what if you don’t feel that you left it all in the arena, that maybe you had more to give?
As a format, the Olympics seems especially tough on athletes. Like general elections, there’s a significant gap in between each iteration, and the landscape can change significantly within that time. Whether you can eke out a world-class performance at the Games is as much about luck and timing as it is about ability and dedication.
Take the unsinkable Thomas Barr, who came within a few hundredths of a second of a medal in Rio, and who acknowledges — even celebrates! — how much faster the event has become in the last five years. While his own performance has held steady since Rio, the field in general has advanced. After just missing out on a place in the final in Tokyo, with his second-fastest time ever, he was philosophical: “The event has moved on so much. There’s two guys ready to break the world record … In some ways, it’s great. In other ways, it just makes it that bit more difficult to qualify at these championships. That time there would have been good enough to get me into a final of any other Olympics. And possibly even, do well in an Olympic final. It’s great to be part of it because history is being paved in this event at the moment … That’s the frustrating part in that I’m in probably the best shape I’ve ever been in.”
Tokyo was full of such stories. The outrageously talented Rhys McClenaghan, felled by a misplaced finger. Ciara Mageean, whose last-minute calf injury severely hampered her chances in the 1500m. In a recent interview with the , British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith revealed that she was still struggling with her own Olympic disappointment after a hamstring injury scuppered her medal hopes in the 100m and 200m.
“It is going to be really difficult for me for a while. I’m still upset … I’m definitely letting myself feel the full rollercoaster of emotions. I think you have to. If you bottle it, you risk it popping up somewhere else down the line. Maybe next year you’d be standing on the startline at the World Championships getting upset because you didn’t deal with what happened in Tokyo.”
Similarly, in a recent excellent interview with Brendan O’Brien in these pages, hockey player Chloe Watkins spoke about being unable to watch the remainder of the Olympics after coming home from Tokyo, and how she was still grappling with feelings of disappointment while everyone around her was telling her how proud they were of her.
I'm fascinated by these pieces and the insight they gave into the post-Olympics slump. It makes a certain sense, of course, why we don’t talk too much about disappointment. Sportspeople are, if not outright superstitious, then well-schooled enough in psychology to know that you have to focus on the positive. Dwelling on failure too much can be ruinous.
But maybe, as Asher-Smith noted, it’s equally dangerous to ignore or deny the disappointment. Sometimes I worry that the way we market sport, especially to young women, omits this bit. We are so focused on telling girls that sport will make them confident, happy and healthy, that we forget to tell them that it will also break their hearts.
Then, when they experience their first big loss, they are so devastated that they give up altogether. But it’s the two sides of the coin thing: sport is rewarding precisely because it’s hard. It’s an ongoing grapple with the self; you find out so much about yourself, both good and bad. And because it’s such a challenge to continuously achieve — because you can’t go out and win every single time — you have to set the terms of success for yourself.
One more compelling Tokyo hard-luck story: in the semi-finals of the 800m, US athlete Isaiah Jewett was in third place coming around the final bend. He tripped, as did Nijel Amos of Botswana, coming close on his heels. Other runners leapt over them as the sparse crowd groaned. However, in what must have been the most gutting moment of their careers, the two athletes showed tremendous grace and sportsmanship, helping each other up off the track and jogging the remainder of the race together.
And the next Olympics is only three years away.
