WEAPONS OF MASS DEFLATION

I’m not one to rub salt into the wounds of someone that is grieving.

However, I will when those people are grieving for their own personal failures after pumping themselves up as the greatest thing to hit a swimming pool since Thorpie.

Case in point:  James Magnusson.

Now, I’m not a fan of young James.  Not at all.  His arrogance has been pissing me off for months now.  I grew tired of seeing his melon on the telly, banging on and on about how he’s ready to take gold and ready to perform, and blaa blaa blaaa..

Sure, one shouldn’t confuse arrogance with confidence; there is a very fine line between the two.  However, as a sportsman, it is essential to find the balance between the two. 

If you’re over confident, you’re focusing on how good you’re feeling.  If you’re under-confident, you’re focusing on how sad you’re feeling.  In reality; you should be focusing on the job you have to do.

Young James has talked himself up so much that even I believed he could deliver gold medals in abundance.  Not to mention the fact that the rest of Australia was as well.

How do you know the difference between arrogance and confidence?

When you are the ‘spear head’ of our 4 x 100m relay team, you are expected to conduct yourself a certain way. 

Firstly, when you swim an appalling opening 100 m, don’t sit on the chair behind the block and sulk about it whilst the rest of your team is busting their balls to make up for your shortfall.  Get up and cheer them on, you selfish git.

That is arrogance.

Secondly, when you have to face the media after the race, and explain the reason why you failed in your gold medal campaign, and came fourth, don’t hide behind the other swimmers and ignore the camera.   Stand up and take the heat.

That is arrogance.

As a sportsman, you must take the good with the bad.  Don’t stand in front of the camera and bang on about your awesomeness through good times, and hide like a sulking coward through the bad.

Someone in the Australian Swimming Team should have prepped this boy for a situation like this.  He should have been groomed to take the heat of failure, as well as the glory of victory.

Maybe failure is something he hasn’t experienced for a while, hence the arrogance? 

Well, there’s nothing like failure at a massive, highly televised, international level to help slam that one home.

Maybe the media are to blame.  Maybe they’ve run with the hype.  Maybe they’ve chased him for interviews, plastered him all over their pages and built him up to be our last great hope, and the poor kid has believed the hype as well.

Maybe he’s been pumped up so much himself, that he feels ten foot tall and bullet proof; nothing can stop him.

How crushing to be in his budgie smugglers right now.

Maybe he should take a leaf out of Leisel Jones’ book.  Quietly working away in the background.  Training and doing her thing.  Handling interviews and articles with a humble professionalism that has endeared her to the entire nation.  No arrogance.  No ridiculous declarations.  Just a simple; I’m here to win, and I’m going to give it my all.

A lesson in humility has been well and truly handed to young James, and the rest of the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’.  They certainly dropped a bomb in the pool this weekend, but it just wasn’t a bomb that anyone was expecting.

I just wonder what’s going on with our swimmers.  They just aren’t performing as we’d hoped they would.

We have a young girl, who is an experienced Olympian, swallowing water on her last leg, which possibly cost her a prettier medal than the one she got.  This should never happen at an international level.

We have a quadruple Olympian coming in fifth in races,  another one more focused on tweeting pictures of herself in a bikini, and other’s not even qualifying. 

We’re not even a show at these Olympics, really.  Sure, our 4 x 100m girls grabbed gold, which was awesome!  However, by now, I think all of Australia was expecting a lot more.

Time for the entire Australian Swim Team to do some soul searching, I think, because clearly something is going wrong.

Or is there a much simple answer?  Maybe we’re just not good enough anymore.  Maybe the era of Australia dominating in the pool is over?  Surely the medal tally so far would indicate that it could well be…

Well, at least there are other sports we can follow during these Olympics.  You did know that, right?  There are other sports apart from swimming? 

Imagine that…

Peace out.