Coping with the Olympic pressure cooker

Virginia O’Dine is the mother of Canadian snowboard cross competitor Meryeta O’Dine and is in Pyeongchang, South Korea, to see her daughter compete in her first Olympic Games. The women’s snowboard cross competition starts at 5 p.m. local time Thursday. his is a hard one to write but needs to be said. Sometimes expectations can create unintentional pressure.

I’m writing this in the airport on my way to South Korea. It’s all starting to feel real, finally.

The first year Meryeta started travelling with the National Development Team, and I was no longer driving late nights through blinding snow with demon elk lurking on the highways, it scared me to not be there.

I called her Crash McCrashyFace for a reason. This sport is dangerous.

It scared me to not be there when my teenage daughter threw herself 80km/h down an icy course. I haven’t seen a live race in two years because they’ve been in places such as Chile, Germany, Turkey. I got to stay home and figure how out to pay for it all.

It’s been many weekends of setting alarms for 2 a.m., 3:30 a.m., 4 a.m. – whatever time zone she happens to be in – so that I can watch the World Cups on a European feed. The nerves were shot every weekend. I’m getting a little better at it –

Tthere’s not quite so much pacing back and forth and wringing of hands. Now I’m flying off to watch the largest race in the world and I’m back to pacing. In the airport. As a child, I’d watch the Olympics with wonder. Seeing athletes from warring nations come together under the same roof and share a hug was miraculous to me.

I wondered why everyone couldn’t do that, all the time. To me, this is what the Olympics is about. The world coming together to share the experience.

To put aside differences and celebrate what makes us human and even super-human. It’s not about the results of a 70-second race. It’s celebrating perseverance, sportsmanship and the human spirit.

And like a movie or concert, it’s damned entertaining.

This is what I want my daughter to experience. I’m actually a little weary of hearing “win a medal for Canada!”

Of course, every athlete would like to win a medal. But as Meryeta observed years ago, you could have the best race of your life and no one cares about you if you’re not on the podium. (Speaking generally about the media.) That lesson needs to be remembered in every aspect of life. If you’ve just put on the best performance of your life, what are you going to take away from that? I’ll never forget how freaking excited we were when Meryeta qualified and placed 16th at her first World Cup in Spain. Yes, 16th! That was so exciting. Because we had realistic expectations of her experience.

This is her chance to really take it all in and experience everything this Olympic event has to offer. Meet other athletes, share stories, cheer on team members, cheer on friends from other nations, experience that camaraderie.

Last spring, Meryeta had crashed at a big event and was feeling miserable. I showed her a statistics list of the top female snowboard cross athletes. Meryeta was 11th in the world at that time on the FIS points list. She had nine World Cup starts. Nine World Cup races. The riders in the higher positions had anywhere from 20, 40 to even 70 races under their belts. This puts into perspective not only how inexperienced she is, dagnabbit, but how fantastic she was performing.

Does she deserve to be at the Olympics? Absolutely. As top Canadian woman for an entire season, she does. But the Canadian team is the new guard. This is the first Olympics for all four women. They’re all top-10 contenders. As my friends keep pointing out, 10th in the world is a pretty special place to be. I’m thrilled for all four of these women.

It’s well-known Canada doesn’t provide financial support to its national level athletes as well as many other nations. But if you look at the results, it’s obvious how hard our athletes work and fight for their success.

Canada was in third place in the total medal standings in the 2014 Winter Olympics, and first in 2010.

Watching Meryeta get up to be at the gym for 5 a.m., then put in 10 hours at a landscaping job, then back to the gym that night... that’s dedication.

I’m going to step off that plane with an even mix of trepidation and excitement.

I’m always thrilled when a race is completed in this order of descending success: not dead, not broken, not crashed, not upset, happy with her performance.

Meryeta knows what she’s capable of and will only be unhappy if she doesn’t achieve that.

I’m really hoping the hype doesn’t defeat the great mindset she had going into this event and let her feel her best is anything less than it is.