The 2012 Olympic Games has been hailed a stunning success, both from a home performance point of view and as an international spectacle. But what has been sport psychology’s contribution to the Games and what might the Games mean for sport psychology? 

It was hard to listen to commentary for more than a few minutes and not hear a mention of psychological terms like ‘confidence’ or ‘focus’, and the regular discussions about ‘home advantage’ (hyperlink to Sandy Wolfson’s piece).  Of more interest to psychologists may be the fact that concepts like conquering your ‘inner chimp’ and the aggregation of marginal gains have gone from being technical jargon to common parlance.  This in turn may go some way in de-mystifying the world of sport psychology and the stereotype that you only need sport psychology if there is something wrong.

It can often be a challenge to explain why the very subtle and often subjective changes that sport psychology can offer might be significant to performance sport.  But when an entire Olympiad can rest on falling two millimetres outside of the target, six inches past the changeover line, one second outside of normal competition time or three centimetres short of the qualification distance, then you may be prepared to search for those less tangible improvements.

And this is where sport science, sport psychology and coaching all played their part in these Games.  While many athletes have become household names in the course of the Games, so too have the coaches and support staff, without whom the outstanding performances may not have arisen.  Performance directors like Dave Brailsford and David Tanner, coaches like Tony Minichiello and Shane Sutton, and even psychologists like Dr Steve Peters have received media interest as people become increasingly interested in who are behind these great athletes and how do they do it?  

This final question is where many will now turn their attention.  How do we consistently produce world class performances and how do we best support young athletes in order to ensure that London 2012 wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan within the sporting landscape of the UK?

Douglas MacDonald has highlighted the many difficulties in generating models for long-term athlete development and it is in this area that sport psychology may be able to make a significant contribution – aggregating marginal gains throughout the development of future Olympic champions.