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Not everyone can win

By Ryan de Souza

We’re one quarter of the way through the Rio 2016 Olympics and Australia is placed strongly on four gold medals, tracking well for Kitty Chiller’s proposed 16 gold total.

And yet there has still been unrest, after swimmers Mitch Larkin and Emily Seebohm – our proclaimed king and queen of backstroke – were unable to back their World Championship-winning performances up with gold at Rio.

Larkin finished just outside the medals in fourth place while Seebohm finished a disappointing seventh.

The pair’s inability to match their pre-Olympic expectations seems eerily reminiscent of the London 2012 Olympics. Four years ago, our swimming team went in to the Games with similarly good form and were widely expected to pick-up a swag of medals. Of course, we all know how that ended in tears with just one gold medal and a heap of bad press.

The Australian swimming team’s failures in London supposedly came down to culture. But those problems – we’ve been told – have been rectified, which has meant probing for other reasons why Larkin and Seebohm came-up short.

There might not be a reason, at least not one that anyone but the athletes and those close to them would be aware of.

Australians love their sport but it seems we get too caught up in winning. The media and the public need to understand losing an event we were touted to win isn’t necessarily a failure.

We tend to forget that there are other countries who are also very good at sport. Just because their athletes may not have won the most recent World Championship does not mean they won’t come out firing at the Olympics.

This isn’t the Sydney 2000 Olympics where our swimmers were collecting gold everywhere, so we need to stop putting extra pressure on our athletes. They already put enough on themselves.

There are always going to be events we are favoured to win, yet don’t. But there are also events we win as underdogs. Let’s just relax and let the athletes do what they’ve trained for.

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