Near the bottom of the official Team SA site, there is an “Athlete Health Online Portal”. Two of the click-throughs take the athlete to the World Anti-Doping Agency and the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport. The other is labelled “Mental Health”.
This is just the opening to another link that takes the athlete to what promises to be “Mental Tips for Great Performance”. There follows a series of motivational sayings and images put together by the Sascoc Sport Psychology Commission.
It starts well enough with a quote from Bryce Courtenay, the SA-Australian author: “The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further or box better.”
Next up: “Being mentally tough won’t guarantee you a gold medal, but being mentally weak will definitely lose it for you.” Not bad. Next? “From the moment you step on the airplane to go to Australia — know that you belong in this team, so ACT like the great athlete you are. Strong, positive body language primes your brain to feel more confident.”
Wait. Australia. Has this not been updated since the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast? Tokyo? Birmingham? Paris? No matter. On with the tips:
“Focusing on the correct things at the correct time will help you perform your best. Just control your controlables.”
“REMEMBER: sometimes best focus is no focus! There are times that you need to get your mind off competing and give yourself a mental break.”
“Get out of your head. Don’t overthink it!”
“BREATHE! Deep breathing is one of the best ways to control nerves.”
“Some of the world’s greatest athletes will be at the Games — don’t let them get into your head.”
“You are not supposed to do this on your own — use the team around you for support.”
“Trust your preparation. Trust yourself. Trust the process.”
That should do it. The medals should roll in now. Over to you, Blitzbokke. Oops. A little too much of the “no focus” there, lads. Some of you might be getting out of your heads at the Le Rendez-Vous bar near the Stade de France a little sooner than you had hoped.
Paris could do with a lot of deep breathing today with the opening ceremony upon them, their honour and pride on show for the world to see. The City of Light is aglow with expectation and nerves, excited and on edge. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has let slip the most un-secret of secrets that Céline Dion and Lady Gaga will sing a duet at the opening ceremony.
They will sing Édith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose”. “I will not reveal anything, what (opening ceremony director) Thomas Jolly and all his teams have prepared,” said Macron. “There is also a surprise.”
These will be, obviously, a very different Games from 1924. The Seine will be clean and swimmable for the first time since 1923. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, swam in the Seine last week to show that it was clean.
The E-coli, enterococci and micro-organisms that “for centuries would strike down the unfortunate bather” have been overcome, reported Bloomberg.
“From July 30, the river’s newly pristine waters will host the Olympic open-swimming competitions — that is, unless rainstorms overwhelm the new sewage treatment system and force the events indoors.
“No host has staged Olympic swimming in an urban river since the Games were revived in 1896, and the stakes are high. The Seine has long had a dirty reputation, and swimming in the river has been banned — officially at least — since 1923.
“A billion people are expected to watch the games, and it will only take one vomiting triathlete to tarnish the river’s new image.”
The International Olympic Committee are desperate for these to be the Games of Peace, a “risk-free” Olympics after the Covid-19 Games of Tokyo. “It signified a return to the west after a decade when they had two grimly dystopian Winter Games, in Sochi and Beijing, and a summer edition in Rio that was riddled with waste, corruption and worries about the Zika virus,” wrote Andy Bull in the Guardian.
These, suggest Bull, will be the Conflict Games, playing out against the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the banning of Russia, the child-like politics of Trump and the rise of the right wing.
Paris 2024 will be the world’s moment to breathe and reflect. Nothing will be resolved when these Games are done, but for a few weeks, we can watch sport and not overthink life.
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