You know, every time I think about these Olympics I get the shivers. This time, it's not the usual excitement I feel when major track meets roll around.
It's also not about the fact that this time we are fielding the strongest ever contingent of athletes to come out of this blessed and oftentimes cursed country.
So bloody scared
What gives me the shivers is the expectations this nation has of the team and I am so bloody scared those expectations won't be met. Oh, I know we have Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell. We have Asafa Powell and Kerron Stewart. We also have two other women who are among the top-10 fastest in the planet,Shelly Ann Fraser and Sherone Simpson. In fact, if we were to win gold medals, based on who has run the best times in the world this year, we could possibly win six, maybe even seven. That is out of a total of 12 to 13 medals! It's absurd, just thinking that that is possible.
I also know that when things can go wrong they often will. Already, we are seeing signs that we are on the verge of self-destructing with this foolishness going on between MVP athletes and the team managers. It's almost as if we can't stand success. And even though the situation has reportedly been diffused, I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Lofty expectations of individuals
That aside, it also makes me sick with worry that we have these lofty expectations of individuals. We feel Bolt is going to win the double and I am sure he feels the same way but shouldn't we just be hoping instead of expecting? It's one thing to want something very much but sometimes we can want something too much, and when that happens, we develop un-realistic expectations.
The thing is we don't see our expectations as being unrealistic. I remember when this country was going through the rounds of qualifying for the World Cup in France, just over a decade ago, there were people here who actually believed we could win it all. And, while I support the idea of setting goals, one can't set goals that are beyond the realm of possibility.
Win it all against the odds
We can jump from the roof of a 20-storey building, and have expectations to fly if we flap our arms hard enough, but there are little things that we tend to overlook - like gravity - that quickly brings us back down to earth.
In some way, though, I don't blame us for wanting our guys to win it all against the odds. After 46 years of independence, as a nation, we really don't have that much to show. Among the relatively few things that we do have to show, and that we can be proud of, is the tremendous success of our athletes. When they perform, I am convinced even some of our criminals take time out to watch. Everybody knows that crime goes down every time the Olympics are on. (I hope that it doesn't change now that I have gone and mentioned it.)
Proud to be Jamaican
The success of our athletes makes us feel good inside. For a short time, it makes us really proud to be Jamaican. It is that feeling that we so desperately crave. We want it to feel more like that every day. We want to wake up in the mornings and not have to worry about getting shot, about paying more for gas, about finding food for our kids, about being able to afford their rising school fees.
But, with all that, we have to remember that our athletes are human and the pressure on them is intense. Pray for them. Ask God to keep them healthy and hope that distractions, like last week's fiasco, do not shake their focus or their confidence.
But, we don't need to start predicting that they will win this and win that. They DON'T have to do anything. We don't know what can happen. What they have overcome, just to get to Beijing in the first place, is a major accom-plishment. But, I'm afraid we are getting to the point of wanting them to win so badly, we'll end up jinxing them all.
And, we just couldn't live with that. That's what gives me the shivers.
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