No, You (or Your Kids) Will (Probably) Not be an Olympian in a Few Years
I love the Olympics.
Summer or winter, doesn’t matter, I’ll take the time out of my month to watch the opening ceremony, closing ceremony, and as much of everything in between as I can (or as NBC allows me to :x).
When I was 10, I had already been swimming for a few years, and I was a pretty strong swimmer. At my peak, I was able to do a freestyle sprint for 25 m pretty quick. I have no idea what the time was, but at the time it felt almost instantaneous, and I was pretty proud of how fast I was.
Anyway, that summer, I remember we went to Baltimore because my dad loves seafood and wanted to see the Baltimore crab hype. I bought a Sports Illustrated for Kids for the car ride, and the cover was a swimmer with a crazy huge wingspan.
That was 19 year old Michael Phelps.
(Until now, I never realized the irony of being able to watch him compete while in Baltimore)
I wanted to be like Michael Phelps. I wanted to swim in the Olympics and represent my country, make my family proud, and show the world that I can swim fast (I guess I’ve been a competitor since I was young).
He inspired me to actually want to go to swim practice every week (I’d much rather watch Saturday morning cartoons), and swim harder to try to make it to the Olympics one year. Needless to say, I stopped swimming once I got to middle school, and that was the end of that.
In high school, we started a rugby team. In 2012, the IOC announced that they would be adding rugby sevens to the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. My Olympic flame was rekindled in a different sport.
But at this point, I realized it’s probably not possible.
I dove deep into rugby. I watched as many games on American TV and YouTube as possible, studied players and how they move, and trained as close as I could to the pros in the weight room. The more I learned about it and played in college, the more I realized I wasn’t going anywhere.
I weighed 130 pounds when I graduated high school, and around 150 when I was still playing in college. The lightest pro players were at least 170, and even that was rare.
This was also the time where I started getting into lifting more. I was spending my time lifting and reading/watching as much as I could about strength and conditioning after class instead of doing homework. The more I read into it, the more I realized everything is based on genetics.
There’s no outworking, out eating, or even out-anything genetics. You can try, but you’ll never be a top level athlete if you don’t have the genetics for it.
This can be very difficult to understand for most people. I’m not saying you can’t be an amazing athlete without top tier genetics, but you’ll never be a world class athlete without top tier genetics.
Why else would there only be 13,452 athletes that competed/are competing in Rio de Janeiro and Pyeongchang combined? In case you forgot, there’s over 7.6 billion people in the world. That equates to 0.00000177% of the population being good enough at their sport to qualify for the Olympics.
I’m not writing this to discourage anyone, especially the youth, to pursue greatness in any field they choose, but more so to discourage parents from over-complimenting (and maybe slightly pressuring) their children which may create for a sense of disappointment in some of the younger population on not being able to make it to the world stage.
I get it, if I had kids of my own, I’d be always so proud of their accomplishments and achievements, on the field or off, but by saying “keep trying and you’ll make it to the Olympics one day” over and over again has a greater chance than not of setting them up for self disappointment or even a lost interest in a sport that they once loved.
To simplify things, if your child isn’t a world class athlete by the time they’re in their early teens, it’s pretty doubtful they’re going to make it to the Olympics. There’s nothing wrong with that, they can still excel in whatever they choose to, but it’s generally just better off letting them do whichever sport they choose for fun. There’s enough outside pressure for academics and finding a good paying job and keeping a healthy social life in our youth already. No need to burn them out more by putting pressure on them to win and make nationals/worlds/Olympics.
Now, with that out of the way, I want to end it with this: reach for it anyway. Just because you’re not part of the 0.0000177% doesn’t mean you can’t be amazing. In fact, this can almost allow you to breed more improvement without the pressure of being top in the world. Need an example? Look at how great Nathan Chen skated in the long program, after the pressure of being on the podium was off.
Just because you can’t be a top performer in your sport doesn’t mean you won’t be in something else. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, it’s just up to you to find your strength and go all in on that.
Life (and sports) should be about creating fun and happiness. If you competing in a sport does that for you, then go for it. Compete hard and to the best of your ability. Have fun. Enjoy it while you’re young and able to perform.
If it doesn’t bring you joy to perform in a certain area, and it just seems like work, maybe find something you actually enjoy for the sake of just doing it.
After all, it’s not that serious. Just have fun!
