Mind Games: It's not easy being the gold-medal favourite

Mellisa Hollingsworth, Canada's first Olympic medallist in the skeleton, went into the 2010 Games as the one to beat. 

Landing on the podium in seven of eight World Cup events that season, she was the 2010 World Cup champion and the gold-medal favourite in Vancouver. She had won bronze at the 2006 Turin Olympics, and her sights were set on upgrading that. Entering her final run, she sat in second place. 

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After posting a personal-best start, the gold medal was within reach, but it wasn't to be. A mistake on the track forced her to settle for a heartbreaking fifth-place finish. She would later reflect that she felt like she let her whole country down.

Sadly, favoured athletes are no stranger to this type of disappointment at the Olympics. There is a litany of favourites, who, like Hollingsworth, sampled the bitter taste of defeat. 

While Canadians celebrated Penny Oleksiak's win at the Rio Games in 2016, Australia's world record-holder Cate Campbell finished a shocking sixth in that same race. Olympian Shaun Barber failed to duplicate his world-championship performance from 2015 at both the 2016 Olympics and 2017 world championships in the pole vault, despite being heavily favoured.

Our nation's heart stopped beating for a moment as we witnessed the 2003 hurdles world champion, Perdita Felicien, fail to clear the first hurdle in the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Perhaps most famously, American Dan Jansen struggled time after time at the Olympic Games despite being one of the greatest speed skaters, with multiple records, world championships and World Cups to his name. It wouldn't be until his fourth Olympics, in Lillehammer in 1994, that he would finally deliver a victory in what was the final race of his career.
It would appear that for the favoured athlete, fulfilling this prophecy at the Olympics can be as difficult as completing a hat trick multiplied by infinity. 

Downhill racer Steve Podborski, Olympic bronze medallist in 1980 and Canada's chef de mission for the Sochi Olympics, warns in his autobiography: "You've got to watch the star-trip syndrome. You read in the papers that you're great, people start telling you you're great, and you start thinking you're great. If you start believing it you're dead meat."

The buildup to the Olympics can catapult an athlete from unknown to household name. Life becomes a fishbowl as they suddenly find themselves managing sponsors, public appearance requests and the added expectation of others telling them to "Go for the gold!" It can be a recipe for disaster.

Expressing frustration over the media's pressure, Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard summed up what the weight of a nation's expectation can feel like when, after a first-round loss at last year's Rogers Cup, she said, "Someone else can carry the burden of Canada." 

A burden

Indeed, the expectations of others can feel like a burden. Heightened media attention can shift an athlete's focus toward the outcome of winning, and away from the "process" — the very thing that is methodically designed to deliver a win. 

This can stoke the fire for the greatest battle within — the fear of failure.

With the advent of social media, managing the distractions of newfound attention has added another layer of complexity in this dialogue. 

Take Twitter, a platform on which fans now have direct access to Olympians like never before, sometimes even interacting with them between heats and rounds. Whether messages are providing support or expressing dislike, it can all be  distracting and disruptive to how an athlete normally prepares for competition. 

Cate Campbell succumbed to this fate, when a friend texted her a good luck message before her 100-metre freestyle final in Rio.

In Vancouver, American Shaun White was able to prove he could win back-to-back in the halfpipe at the Olympic Games.  However, the third time proved no charm.  The most talked-about athlete on Facebook at the Sochi Olympics would later state that he wasn't in the right mindset at the Games. As he explained, "When your mind's not there, you can be as strong as you want, you can be the best rider, but if your head's not in the right space it just won't work."  

While this doesn't definitively prove that the media attention White received caused him to not perform well, it certainly does highlight the importance of controlling conditions to ensure an optimal mindset. He's now seen as a favourite for these Games after building himself up to peak in Pyeongchang following the disappointment of Sochi and a devastating training accident. He's a veteran in every sense of the word and used to more distractions than most with social media and his rock band projects. Can his experience carry him through?

Routines serve as the bedrock to consistent performances in elite athletes. Not to be confused with superstitions, they involve specific actions, which assist athletes in preparing for training and competition. Disrupting this process can turn an athlete's sense of confidence and readiness upside down.  

Even on the grandest of stage — the Olympics — successful athletes learn to keep their normal activities the same as possible leading to and during the Games. As soon as an athlete treats the competition differently and departs from their normal routine, they invite an opportunity for inferior performance.  

A study by researchers Kathy Kreiner-Phillips and Teri Orlick explored this phenomenon in world and Olympic champions. They found that with success came added demands and heightened expectations from themselves and others. Athletes who are able to manage these demands best were able to have continued success at the Olympic or world championships.

Main focus and goals

Similarly, in a study I conducted with three-time Olympic and/or world champions, athletes described the need to maintain their focus and goals in spite of their success. 

These athletes highlighted the importance of avoiding the increasing distractions and attention to them as key to their success. As one multi-Olympic champion and world recorder-holder explained, "To produce one incredible year is one thing, but to do it year after year after year that requires a lot of single mindedness. A lot of discipline."  

However, mastering this craft isn't as difficult as it may seem. 

Alex Bilodeau, the first Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal on home soil in 2010, laid a blueprint for it when he backed it up with a repeat performance in 2014. His approach to Sochi was less about defending his Vancouver victory and more about a new chapter in his journey to excellence. He viewed this as another opportunity to win an Olympic medal. 

This simple methodology allows athletes to press the reset button and remove the feeling of competing in a fishbowl, attempting to live up to the expectations of others.

The Olympics are arguably the greatest test for any athlete. The ability to perform when it counts most, with the weight of a nation on your shoulders is no small feat.  

As you tune in to watch your favourite Olympian compete in Pyeongchang, remember there is another competition taking place that you can't always see.

It's called mind games. 

At this level of competition, where a tenth of a point or a hundredth of a second is the difference between a gold medal and fourth place, having the right mindset makes all the difference in the world in delivering that coveted performance.