Losing isn't everything

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It's not as if the Opal's are useless, nor our men's basketball team. We give less to sport and have fewer people to train and so all sorts of factors come into play when we lose. Same with the swimming. Pretty silly to think silver isn't good enough when we had so many new faces. It was awesome our swimming team did so well, so brilliantly when most of them were up and coming . This is where Ian Thorpe comes in handy. Remember when he fell off the blocks? He just got up and swam as usual. You know, even brilliant people have their imperfections. Like Michael Diamond. He is an astounding shot. He has been constantly that shining diamond. For some reason it went wrong in the shoot that mattered. Could be anything. He'll probably know or if we examine the footage we'll probably see. I'd be worried if human beings, no matter how good they are, were perfect.  So, back to Ian Thorpe. When he lost his place in that race someone was asked to move over and let him in. We all discussed that. There was something not right about it. The coaches made a decision which wasn't quite right in our view. Same with our cricket team. We just assumed we would keep on winning and made some odd decisions which then meant we crashed and had to rebuild. I think it's better not to follow that path. Ian Thorpe's first lesson is the better one. So you have given it all you have, you know you are capable , then , like Sally Pearson and Anna Meares you just have to go over it, get it into perspective and then adopt a scientific approach. No one should feel bad when they have done everything they could to get it right but are in a contest against someone who has a lot more options. We need to use our heads, feel the loss in our hearts, because we were so near. It was so near and then like our men's relay we didn't get there in the end. We have some things to learn as a nation. The Opals are a great team. Our men's relay team ran so well. We need to be backing our athletes with our care and our brains.