With a Blood Hurdling Cry...

I was a bit puzzled by some disappointed Australians on telly recently. They were virtually suggesting that missing out on a medal wasn’t their fault, it was the weather’s.

It was two Olympic sailors and they capsized their boat - twice. They were racing very well and hunting through the field and were looking at pulling a medal, when they ditched it a couple of times and came out all sad-faced at the camera.

I would have thought that there were two important skills involved in being the best sailors on the planet. One; reading the weather. It’s going to play a part in sailing so please get used to it. And Two; find alternatives to getting around the course clinging to the underside of your upturned dinghy.

But these guys were very skilled tradesmen indeed, compared to a Swedish girl I watched last night. She quite literally fell at the first hurdle.

She went to China from Sweden, ran a few heats, got to the semi-final of the 100 meter women’s (term used loosely) hurdles, got up off the blocks, ran 10 meters and fell over. She completely failed to get over the hurdle. She had the physique that indicated she could clear a three bedroom house, so it was obviously a mental problem.

In her commentary, Raelene Boyle said how heartbreaking it was to work all that time, put in all that practice, train all those thousands of hours, only to have this happen on the night. She then went on to speculate that the Swedish woman must have come out of the blocks and got to the hurdle surprisingly quickly and not got her foot high enough.

Two things occur here. If you train thousands of hours as a hurdler and still cannot reliably get over the first hurdle, or are able to surprise yourself with your own turn of speed; You are in the wrong game.

Or… Raelene Boyle is still trying to explain how it’s possible to train that much and still balls up a really crucial part of a running race.