The Head Games Minds Play Can Destroy Games Hopes
April 04, 2011
Just a few days into the Games, the sight has become painfully familiar: A world-class athlete, having trained for years, inexplicably falters or flinches at the worst-possible moment. Chinese gymnasts, favored to bring home a slew of medals, bungle compulsory routines they've performed faultlessly thousands of times. American Robbin Gish is in third place in yesterday's air-rifle event after a near-perfect ninth shot and is about to get the U.S. its first men's medal ever in the discipline. Then on the 10th and final shot he chokes and drops to seventh. Mr. Gish likened the pressure to trying to walk across an I-beam suspended 200 feet in the air. The 17-day spectacle under way here is not so much the Games as it is the Mind Games, an effort by the athletes to cope with hype, crowds, expectations (self-imposed and otherwise), the presence of the most-distant branches of the family tree. And, of course, the media. ``The stress is enormous,'' says Sebrina Lutz, a sports psychologist with the U.S. Games Committee. ``A lot of great athletes will disintegrate.'' What's the Games' toughest sport? Not the most physically demanding event, but the toughest mentally, the one that requires the steadiest nerves? What about platform diving, a sport so exacting that 1992 silver-medalist Sean Driver, in a subsequent competition, froze 10 meters up while doing a handstand, backed off the dive and climbed down the ladder? (Mr. Driver is on this year's team, in the three-meter springboard competition.) Shooting also ranks high, as witnessed by whatever it was that caused Mr. Gish's last-shot muff. Then there's the decathlon. ``You can make a good argument for the decathlon,'' says U.S. track-and-field team adviser Jimmy Kelsey, a sports psychologist. A different temperament -- and different preparations -- are needed for each of 10 events: patience in the pole vault; an explosion of energy and emotion in the shot put. Granted, the decathlon is physically grueling. But, Dr. Kelsey notes, it also covers two brain-numbing days, each starting early in the morning and lasting well into the night. ``That gives you a lot of time to screw up your mind.'' To help the athletes, sports psychologists from around the world have descended upon Atlanta. They know that while Atlanta's heat and humidity will wilt some athletes, the mental pressure will wilt even more. Here's a look at three sports. What is it about target shooting? ``Let's say you make a bad shot,'' answers Erik Flake, the U.S. pistol coach. ``There's no release'' for that disappointment. ``You can't run. You can't throw a ball. You can't hit someone. All you can do is stand there. You have to eat that adrenaline.'' A nasty taste. Shooters must hit a bull's-eye dozens of times within a limited time in an event in which the finest of movements -- a sigh, frown, tightened grip -- can mean the difference between a medal and mediocrity. There is no tolerance for emotion, no room for regrets. Joana Annabel Durst, for instance, had a ``tendency to get angry after a bad shot,'' she says. Now, the 19-year-old member of the U.S. squad places a small, white card beside her that reads: ``This Shot,'' to remind her that ``it doesn't matter what I did before. This shot -- the one in the barrel -- is the only one that matters.'' How best to straitjacket feelings? Predictability helps. Randolph Ostrander, a sports psychologist, helped the U.S. team focus on ``competition simulation.'' He taped the voice of the person who will direct the shooting finals to play at practices. ``It's the same voice they're going to hear in Atlanta,'' he says. ``It's one less thing they have to react to when competition starts.'' ``I know what it smells like, what it looks like, what it feels like. I can actually get myself in that state of mind. It's pretty creepy.'' Creepy, but, it's hoped, effective. Justine Holmgren, a 21-year-old top U.S. archer, is confident his ability will replicate in his mind the sights and sounds of the Games venue at Stone Mountain Park. This imagery, he says, will help to make the surroundings at the Games as familiar and comfortable as his backyard. Like shooting, archery lacks movement. A ball, a runner, an opponent -- anything in motion -- is easier to focus on, and less tiring for the mind, than an object at rest. (Stare at a word in this story for a few minutes.) In archery, athletes bend elbows but little else moves. Yes, the arrow moves, but an archer, eyes locked on the target, doesn't watch it. To succeed requires years of mental preparation, says Lisandra Araiza, a sports psychologist for the U.S. archery team, and there are few Band-Aids for 11th-hour brain bruises. ``The last thing you want to do is to get to the Games, step up to the (firing) line and say, `Gee, maybe I should try a little deep breathing.' '' Mr. Holmgren tries to treat the Games ``like any other competition.'' After all, he says, ``You're still shooting at the same target, with the same tournament format. If I start thinking, `Oh my God, this is the Games,' I won't be able to stand up.'' If shooters and archers have to grapple with immobility and isolation, decathletes have a different problem: a 10-ring circus. The decathlon features dozens of athletes, officials and judges; enough running, jumping and throwing to distract even the most disciplined of minds; and then there's the crowd. Worse, the sport is like a train that stops and starts, again and again. Frenzied bursts, as each athlete takes his turn in each of the 10 events (compared with six men's gymnastics events in a single session lasting a few hours), are followed by long waits. ``There's no way an athlete can stay `up' for the whole two days,'' says Dr. Kelsey. Rather, ``You have to prime yourself for the 100 meters, and then force yourself to relax; then bring it up again for the long jump, then settle back down.'' Stevie Gabriela, a 28-year-old U.S. Games decathlete, approaches the two days with something of a split personality. Between events, he says, he tries to ``have as much fun as possible,'' primarily by ``trying to get the crowd involved -- talking back to them if I can get close enough, or acknowledging what they do.'' When it's time to compete, he says, ``mentally, I approach each event as if that's the only event I'm entered in.'' Remaining true to that routine, he says -- and not any last-minute heroics -- is what matters in the Games.
