Bet On A Calm Sprinter To Win The Olympics Every Time
When Jamaican sprinter Ronda Whyte lined up for her Olympic sprint heats she lacked the calm demeanor of the heat winner Bol Femke and that’s why she was disqualified from the Olympics
“Bang”
And your Olympics are over.
It all happened that quickly for a few athletes at the Tokyo Olympics Games of 2020. Although the Games happened a year later due to the Coronavirus speedily lapping itself around the world which meant the athletes had to wait another year for their big performance, some couldn’t wait a moment longer at all.
Because in one shot of the starter gun, it was over for them before it began.
One such athlete was Ronda Whyte of Jamaica.
From a country renowned for sprinting where Usain Bolt who was the greatest sprinter there is because he became the world record holder in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and the 4 by 100 meters relay. Then there was Yohan Blake. He was the youngest ever 100-meter sprint champion at the 2011 world championships.
And there were others too in Asafa Powel and Nesta Carter.
So when I got comfortable on my couch late at night to watch the women’s 400-meter hurdles qualifiers and saw Ronda Whyte line up I was excited.
I knew there would be a quality athlete there to watch.
Oddly though as colorful as she was in her bright yellow singlet with its border of bright green I can’t say I recognized her from the previous Olympics. And there was a just reason for that.
Because Whyte never made the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Strange as that was for a 30-year-old athlete in her prime she had missed out on 2016 due to injury.
Heartbreak.
But there was more to come for her in Tokyo too. Because that’s when she ended her own Olympics in the shortest of time frames. Her foot kicked the electronic pressure pad too suddenly and she received a false start and that was that for Ronda.
It was very sad to see.
An athlete in her prime who was ready to compete at what would probably be her last Olympic Games where realistically she could have competed for a medal.
Yet the funny thing about her career was that if it had gone the way she intended she would not be competing as a 400-meter hurdler in the Olympics at all. Instead, she would be running in a long-distance event or in competition as a long jumper. Because that’s how she competed in athletics before her coach Maurice Wilson persuaded her she could shorten the distance.
And interestingly a couple of months before the Olympic Games Ronda posted online her insecurities about whether she was good enough or not to compete.
Because in April of 2021 she posted:
“It’s hard to believe it will get better, but having faith that it will is part of the reason it does.”
Yet the faith wasn’t good enough for her.
Because she bolted too quickly in her heats that was the end of her Olympic journey.
But moments before it was intriguing to see how she reacted to when the cameraman approached her on the start line. As the camera made its way along the lanes it first came to the eventual heat winner Bol Femke of the Netherlands. Femke opened her body up to the camera and waved with a big open smile momentarily.
It was clear she was very relaxed.
Whereas Whyte was very different. Because when the camera came to her she looked tense. And there was no crowd in the stadium to make her feel that way.
Because with the Covid-19 virus still replicating in the world the organizers had decided to make sure few, if any, people were in the stands.
That meant that Whyte had only herself to distract.
Unlike others in the race and most notably Femke, Ronda Whyte never smiled or waved to the camera but instead kept her body tight as she awaited the starters’ orders.
And within a minute or so the result of her anxiety came to pass.
Because the pressure pad technology at the Olympic Games does not miss any little movement before the starter gun. As Omega timekeepers have been officially timing races since the 1932 Olympic Games it was their 29th Olympic Games that they were covering. So it’s true to say they`ve seen it all and have adapted their technology to suit.
As human athletes tend to jump the gun when they are too anxious to start scientists have discovered that the average human takes one one-tenth of a second to react to a stimulus.
With this in mind if a competitor at the Olympics starts to react sooner than one-tenth of a second after the gun is blasted then the timers consider this a breach and they promptly disqualify the athlete. So gone are the days when athletes get a second chance which did happen for a long time in the past.
These days the athletes need to be calm on the line and Ronda Whyte unfortunately was not.
So it just proves that speed is no good unless you can mix it with poise under pressure.
Get FREE Access To Dr. Conor’s VIP List Here (Limited Time Only)
