Cate Campbell, you are still a champion

Really tell that to Jodie Henry,Libby Lenton, Grant Hackett, Liesel Jones Tracey Wickham and others!

Queenslanders dont perform on the big stage, a well known fact. Its a shame as they do well at national level. More money needs to be spent on other states without the fragile mental weaknesses.

Isn't the biggest odds on favourite to fail in Olympic history the American Dream team of 2004. Australia's biggest odds on favourite was the relay team that won gold with the biggest chokers on board. Choking can only explain failures in finals, the rest of the swim team were noticably down even before the finals. The only explanation that makes sense and fits the facts is my gas in the Olympic Village building theory..

I'm very impressed by the Campbells as people and how they handle themselves in public. They're well liked for a reason. I'm not impressed with either as individual Olympic swimmers but apparently you're now allowed to criticise that aspect according to the Australian mainstream media (not theroar).

"When Cate Campbell imploded in the women’s 100m freestyle final – the most certain of our certain gold medallists – I was as stunned as anyone." I wasn't. Have you followed Australian swimming for the past 20 years? "Cate has been carrying a hernia for some time. It obviously hurts but that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is pent-up emotional energy that left her physically drained." Its her third Olympics. Choking isn't really an excuse. If Liesel Jones got over her choking by her third Olympics why not Cate? "How was it that Phelps could prepare himself to make 18 individual finals out of 18, medal 16 times and win 13 gold medals, controlling his emotions and nailing his performance time and time again, while Cate struggled to do it the one big chance she got?" Australians can't handle being favourites. Sam Stosur, Greg Norman etc. Our sporting identity is so wrapped up in being the "scrappy underdog punching above his/her weight" that we can't handle when we aren't the underdog. Look at the inane "mind games" that go in the NRL and AFL with coachs saysing the other team is favourite. Being favourite is a curse amongst Australians. Notice how Kyle Chambers wasn't favourite and most people hadn't heard much from Mack Horton before the 400m free. Americans have a culture of confidence and the expectation of succeeding. In Australia our sportspeople are too worried about tall poppy syndrome and upsetting the idiotic mainstream media that will turn feral on them if they "get big heads". Sure, Cate and Bronte are great ambasssadors for Australian sport and the Olympics and I wish them well but that doesn't mean I, we, can't criticise their sporting performances.

I have been a clinical psychologist for the last 10 years, and have worked with a fair share of patients suffering from performance related anxiety. I don't pretend to be as experienced as the clinicians working on the Australian swim team, so take with a grain of salt, but if I were to be presented with a client who presented to me with the symptoms mentioned by Cate, I'd say it would be very unlikely for them to ever be able to perform to expectations under pressure. To help a patient like that, cognitive behavioral therapy is recommended, and treatment would focus on challenging the client's belief that performance was of paramount importance. Anxiety results from the belief that this is an all-or-nothing proposition - some people perform well under those circumstances, but some don't. Psychologists understand, unfortunately, that it is impossible to teach someone who doesn't thrive under pressure to be taught to thrive under pressure. They can learn to cope. They can learn to perform. They cannot be taught to revel in that pressure, to process it into something transcendent and to use it to help them to surpass their limits. It is always going to be an impediment for them, whereas for certain others it is the exact opposite. In every sport, there has existed a 'great' remembered not just for their ability, but for their ability to produce their absolute best when it really mattered. It is a kind of bottled lightning. It can't be reproduced or taught or trained, and it's as important a kind of giftedness (when it comes to sports, for such individuals also tend to have less happy lives) as the more obvious physical gifts without which our elite sportspeople would be average joes like you and I (or at least, like me). For someone like Cate, or for someone like Cate appears to be from this article, the best you can hope for is to help them to be able to feel that there IS no pressure. You can teach someone who suffers from performance anxiety to cope well enough to perform, but you can't teach them to peak. They are always going to perform better when the stakes aren't high. Always. This is important because the whole nature of the Olympics - the public expectation, the spectacle, once every four years, the media scrutiny - would all work against the therapeutic approach. To cut a long story short, any progress I could make with a client like Cate would be constantly undone by everyone else in her life saying the exact opposite of what she would need to hear to perform to her potential. The situation - her anxiety standing on the blocks - wasn't missed. It simply could not be controlled. There was no way of pretending that this one didn't matter, that everyone wasn't expecting the gold, that her life wouldn't completely change based on the result of that one race. It was do or die. It was the Olympics. By the she got there, it was already too late to do anything for her.

I'm hugely impressed with Cate as a person, including how she handled devastation. But how can this happen? It was basically a day long choke. Just extraordinary. Were there no signs? Where was the help?

Magnussen is considered a failure because he swam almost a second outside his best in the freestyle relay final. Getting a silver with half a second faster wasn't going to make up for that on two fronts. Firstly it wasn't that great a time so he still should have got the gold. More importantly it makes him look selfish, he dudded his teammates., thoiugh they also underperformed. Kate Campbell on the other hand she put the best 100m time in the relays. Her swim in the final medley went from 6th to 2nd so she earnt gold and silver for others. Then you have to look at Magnussens dud swim in the 4x100m final this time around. Cameron McEvoy at least performed in that relay, and got back the bronze medal,.

Magnussen was considered a failure because of the WMD garbage he spouted before the 2012 games. If he'd shut his mouth he'd be considered a hero.

There's a missing 'íf' in amplify

Swimming is a cruel sport. Not necessarily fun. From a very early age little kids are hustled out of bed early on cold mornings to swim laps before school, staring at nothing but a black line on the bottom of a pool. Many parents, living dreams through their kids, make them repeat the experience again after school. It's relentless. Of course Australia loves its champion swimmers ,well once every four years at least, when a lifetime of an athlete swimming thousands of kilometers of laps is remembered in a space no human being can measure , like one, one hundredth of a second. At the 2012 Olympics ,James Magnussen was beaten in the 100 meter freestyle by one, one hundredth of a second, and despite gaining a silver medal was considered a failure. There are well ventilated extenuating circumstances , but the fact remains Magnussen is remembered for failing to win gold by two,one hundredths of a second. Swimming is made for television. Coloured caps, often chasing a moving blue line, amply the tension. However in between each Olympic Games, the public can watch world class swimmers at every State Championship in Australia. No need to book, just turn up and sit anywhere you want. The stands are relatively empty because most people only care about swimming once every four years. Absolutely Cate Campbell is a champion, but the majority of people don't get it. Never will.

Hey, that's racing ! You need a lot of things to fall into place to win, and there's always someone waiting to beat you. Pressure is an intangible, and although I am not an Olympian, I have competed in three sports at national level and the mental component is by far the most difficult factor to control. I was quite stunned (but in hindsight, not all that surprised) at the response of many in the sporting media, most of whom couldn't run out of sight on a dark night, to the "failures" of our athletes. The nagging clue to me was the alarming number of athletes who "left it all out there" which I feel indicates there are too many mind coaches, psychologists and spin doctors on the considerable payroll who may have uni qualifications but no actual top-level sporting participation or experience on their cv to impart to our sporting reps. Felt like it to me, anyway.

None of this explains how the swim team was off to such a great start early including Bronte Campbell and MAck Horton and then went downhill. The obvious explanation is the gas in Australia's Olympic village building and the complete ignorance of Australia's officials in letting them move into the building.

an olympic gold medalist

"The real reason is pent-up emotional energy that left her physically drained." If that is the case where was the Psychologist ? Presumably if she was a nervous wreck for 20 hours prior to the race a clinical professional could of helped her . Cates failure was symptomatic of something bigger - systemic coaching failures from the swim team - from muddled minds to dodgy starts , an unmitigated disaster . The swim team are a joke , they need tough love not articles swooning over their vulnerabilities , as we all have those !

I agree sheek CATE CAMPBELL, YOU ARE A CHAMPION