24 July 2012
Last updated at 14:27 GMT
Until recently much of sports psychology has focused on training the mind to win. Over the next two weeks however, most Olympians will lose and top sports psychologists are starting to realise how crushing that defeat can be.
Out of the 10,500 athletes battling for gold at London's Olympic Games, only 302 will win. The others will face the disappointment, anger and shame that comes with failure.
"Losing is often overlooked, winning is celebrated but the pain of loss is very significant," says sports physician Dr Jordan Metzl of the Sports Medicine Institute of Young Athletes in New York. "The shame and pressure of losing is a very strong emotion that athletes deal with for their entire careers."
Though most athletes will deal with loss in a healthy way, using their disappointment to inspire a harder training regime, for others losing is profoundly depressing.
"In the Olympics somebody gets second or third and that's not good enough," says three-time Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton. "In some countries they are considered a failure. It's unfortunate in the sport that the winner is the only one that really feels happy."
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You can't let a whole country down
A thought that often comes up is, 'I let my country down', especially at the Games. To say that an athlete is in charge of the emotions of a whole country is a very interesting thought psychologically. When this comes up, I tell them that an athlete is not that powerful. I would say, 'OK you did poorly but when you came back home, were all the flags at half mast, was the country in mourning, did they close the schools?'
I use humour to magnify the whole experience to let the athlete see that thought isn't entirely true. Most athletes will admit they are not that powerful. Since they are not that powerful they can easily let go of that thought.
Hamilton is well-placed to describe the pain of loss. In 2000, she competed in the women's 1500m at the Sydney Olympics just three months after running the fastest time in the world. She went into the Olympic race as the firm favourite to come first. It would have been a crucial win - the first ever gold medal for an American middle-distance runner.
On the starting line Hamilton says she felt the pressure of all the people who wanted her to win. Her best friend Mary was dying of cancer and her parents were dealing with the suicide of her brother the year before, and she felt a win was the only thing that would make them happy again. At the same time she thought of her sponsors, Nike who had spent $1m (£650,000) on an advert featuring her.
With 100m to go in the race, a first runner passed her, then another. "These two girls took my dream and my life away," she says. "That moment I remember thinking, 'I can't not win this race - this is not how I planned this.'"
In a split second she decided to make herself fall.
"When my head hit the ground it was like a light turned on and I remember saying to myself, 'You're an idiot. You just fell in the Olympic finals, get up. You are a loser if you don't finish the race.'"
"That was probably the first time I told myself I was a loser. So I got up and got over the finish line and felt the worst feeling I have ever felt. I felt like I let everybody down and it completely destroyed me."
Like many other athletes, she had never anticipated this feeling. "It was always, 'Suzy here's the plan, you are going to win the race,'" she says. "There was never the option that I wouldn't win."
The dominant belief 12 years ago was that to win, an athlete must have no doubt at all that it will happen.
After falling on purpose Hamilton feigned injury
"I never spoke up to my coach and said, 'I don't think I can win this race,'" says Hamilton. "That is a thought that you don't have. If you do have it you don't tell anybody because that shows weakness."
Hamilton began to train for the 2004 Olympics but pulled out at the last minute. The following year she began suffering from depression and reached a point where she contemplated suicide. With a history of mental illness in her family, Hamilton was perhaps more vulnerable to the effects of losing. But according to Dr Jordan Metzl her case is not at all unique.
"There are many athletes who one particular loss or one particular mis-step has really changed the way they deal with their sport and they have problems with that for the rest of their lives," he says.
"Their only goal is succeeding in this one event which may last two or three minutes. That huge amount of pressure seven days a week, 18 hours a day, that's your focus. If every waking hour, you are thinking about that moment in your life and you don't succeed, just think about that pressure."
Experts like Metzl still believe that focusing on winning is an essential part of an athlete's psychology. It may not be possible or even helpful to convince an athlete to think any other way.
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Losers who won again
Freestyle skier Hannah Kearney was favourite to win in the Torino Winter Olympics 2006. She failed to qualify for the finals but came back four years later and won gold in Vancouver after a winning streak of 15 wins. She says that doing poorly in Torino was a horrible experience but made her a better athlete.
US Olympic gymnast and winner of the all-round gold medal in Athens 2004, Carly Patterson was the favourite to win gold going into the Olympic trials that year. After two uncharacteristic falls she came third, barely qualifying. She says it was a bitter personal defeat but believes that it helped ease the public pressure on her going into the Games, a factor that was crucial to her ultimate win.
"If you think you're going to lose, you may well lose," says Metzl. "I don't think it's possible to prepare for a loss."
But recently many psychologists at the elite, Olympic level have championed a different approach. Peter Haberl is a senior psychologist on Team USA responsible for the mental well-being of America's top Olympians. He believes thoughts of losing cannot be avoided.
"The idea of losing comes up a lot because it is a fact of life for the athletes, it is something that they have to deal with," he says.
His approach is influenced by the work of psychologist Daniel M Wenger and his well-known study on thought suppression known as the white bear experiment. Wenger proved that if you ask someone to avoid thinking of an arbitrary thought, such as a white bear, the bear will keep popping into their mind.
"The more you avoid a certain thought the more it is likely to surface," says Haberl. "I would encourage the athlete to confront issues head on, to understand that losing and winning are both part of the athlete experience."
If he senses an athlete is avoiding talking about the possibility of losing he will steer their conversation to a place where they have to discuss it openly.
"Thoughts about losing, and winning for that matter, can detract the mind from staying present."
Haberl is sensitive to the language that athletes use to describe their aspirations for the Games, what the German psychoanalyst Karen Horney has called "The tyranny of the shoulds". If an athletes is saying, 'I should win this' rather than 'I want to' or 'I can' Haberl will try to address their mindset.
He will also work with athletes as they deal with losing after London 2012, especially those for whom the defeat was crushing or unexpected.
"To a certain extent it can be like stages of grieving," he says. "In that moment it is important to be present with an athlete and to help them understand that the moment, though it is extremely painful, will pass."
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On losing
Taraje Williams-Murray competed judo in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. After defeat in 2008 it was a year before he could return to the sport.
"It haunts you day in and day out. After losing, you dream about the competition that night and what went wrong. It's a burden on your shoulders. You feel the anxiety constantly.
It took at least a year for me to get to the point that I was able to function as a contributing member of society. It's taken another year after that until I could get to the point where I could visualise where I was going to be"
The extent to which an athlete is affected by loss depends on various factors. According to Jordan Metzl having interests outside of their sport helps. "If your only identity is as an athlete it puts a tremendous pressure on you as an individual," he says.
He also finds differences in gender - female athletes are more likely to blame themselves when they lose. There are also variations between sports. In team sports teammates tend to support each other while individual athletes have a harder time.
Peter Haberl has found that swimmers find it more difficult to deal with defeat because they compete relatively unaffected by their opponents. When they lose they have no-one to blame.
Though there are no statistics on how many athletes suffer depression after losing, Haberl says there is plenty of anecdotal evidence.
Over the next few months he will be watching to see how his athletes are coping with life after the Games.
"Most athletes do lose, it's normal to be disappointed," he says. "It's not normal to be depressed three months later."
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