Behavior of Olympic Athletes

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Second, not good enough: An analysis of the behaviour of athletes after the Olympic games

Matthew Halickman

April 16, 2014

Matthew Halickman

Kimberly Burton

Psychology 102

April 16, 2014

Second, not good enough: An analysis of the behaviour of athletes after the Olympic games

In sports there is a lot of achievements and a lot of disappointments. If we look at the 2014 Olympic winter games in Sochi we can definitely see the disappointment in the US women's hockey team after winning second place to Canada (Wharton, 2014). The US women found it difficult to deal with the fact that they came in second place especially after all the hard work and effort they put into winning gold both before and during the Olympic games (Wharton, 2014). According to Wharton, most athletes are happier with a bronze medal rather than a silver medal (2014). That being said, it can be concluded that if and athlete wins a bronze medal they can be happy due to the fact that they are officially an Olympic medalist but with silver athletes often regret not pushing that extra mile to win gold, even though they may have gave it there all (Wharton, 2014). If we take a look at American gymnast McKayla Maroney in the 2012 Olympic games, she came in second place because she fell on her vault and her smirk of dissatisfaction has now gone viral (Wharton, 2014). However, this is not the case for all athletes. Some athletes are very disappointed with third place or very happy with second (Wharton, 2014). All in all, winning a medal is great no matter what colour it is but sometimes athletes are left with a sense of dissatisfaction with the fact that that medal wasn't gold.

Coming short on goals can often leave people very emotional....

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...nd on pommel hoarse which I was relatively pleased with. Pommel hoarse has always been my demon in the gym and I was super excited that that was starting to change. But I wasn't thrilled with Gold on rings because as much as there is nothing higher than gold I could have always done that routine just a little bit better. Which leads me to the point that for many high level athletes gold isn't good enough because no matter how well you did it, it could have alway’s been just a little better.

References

Ciccarelli, S.K., White, J.N., Fritzley, V.H., Harrigan, T. (2013). Motivation and Emotion. Psychology (2nd Eds.) (352-395). Toronto: Pearson.

Wharton, D. (2014, February 22). Medal game is often a mental one at the Olympics. Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/22/sports/la-sp-sochi- bronze-age-20140223

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