Olympic slalom - game over

So the Olympic slalom events have just finished, and its good news for Slovakia (3 Golds, dominating mens C1, Mens C2, and Ladies kayak), good news for Australia with their best ever results (bronze in C1, silver in Ladies, 5th in Mens Kayak, 7th in C2) which really puts them on the map as a major canoeing nation, but overall disappointment for Great Britain.  Dave Florence's silver medal is a brilliant achievement - but the team's unashamed mission was to go for Gold.  And while both Fiona Pennie and Campbell Walsh had the capabilty to win medals, both under-performed. 

Slalom is a tough sport (but then again every sport is tough at Olympic level) and in both cases small errors turned into significant time losses.  Bit like the illustration of chaos theory - a butterfly flaps its wings and it leads to a storm breaking out on the other side of the world.  A few centimetres off-line on one gate soon compounds into a 5 -6 second time loss; too much to make up in an event last a minute and a half.

It brings up for me the old chestnut of outcome or process focus.  Put simply, is it better to focus on the outcome you want (e.g. win a gold medal) or the things you need to do to get there?   Conventional wisdom says that focusing on the end -result can be counter-productive, as it leads competitors into a future-oriented, high anxiety state that doesn't enable the 'in the moment' awareness necessary for peak performance. However it is motivating to strive for Gold, so its a useful focus to drive a whole campaign and to encourage commitment and hard work in training.  The tricky bit is ensuring that athletes can switch their focus and motivation from one to the other. 

It's always a tempting explanation to say that underperformance was due to 'nerves'; usually linked to the pressure of expectations and a result focus.  Whether this is true or not is another matter.  Because ultimately, performance is a complex thing, with many many interacting factors.  It's not just one butterfly flapping its wings, it's a a whole flock!  So perhaps seeking simple explanations is a fool's errand.  Like performance in any walk of life, its important to do all that's possible to prepare well, to 'leave no stone unturned'.   Then in the moments of performance itself, perhaps it just comes down to trust and well-honed instinct, the sort of areas where our rational minds run out of steam