"How many hours did you spend

staring at the bottom of a pool?" 

I once asked this question of a boy who was struggling at university. He was a "smart kid", intelligent enough to get into university.  He was also a former competitive swimmer, once tipped for the Olympics. He gave it all up to the intense disappointment of his family, his trainers and others.

"Too many hours," he told me in response to my question, "But I feel like I failed."

He felt others had invested so much time, money and energy in his potential success that he had failed them. He was told he had in fact. He had "not given his best" to the intensive routine he was expected to follow. His father and his coach had expressed their "great disappointment" and more. The demands being made on him were huge. Eventually he scraped through his degree and took off on a round the world working holiday.  Someone else who knew him later told me he was still out of the country and that was almost ten years later.

I thought of him when I learned that a fourteen year old had won a gold medal for "skateboarding" at the Olympics. Apparently all she wants now is a duck. I hope she gets her duck...and the time to relax with it. 

Not everyone will agree with me but I do not think a fourteen year old should be competing in the Olympics. A fourteen year old should be at school and doing things like swimming or skateboarding for the fun of it. How many of them "burn out" and regret the hours they spent? Yes, this teen has a gold medal but what is she going to have say four years from now? Will she do well enough in school to go on to train for something else, a career of some sort? Will she regret the hours spent training when she could have been out with her friends? What sort of pressure will she now be under?

And what about the cost of training her and getting her there? It takes others to do that. Her family will have invested heavily in that medal. Is it really worth so much? 

My answer to that would be "no" on many levels. I also know that other people will read this and think I am being ridiculous, that sport is much more important than that. We will have to agree to disagree.