HONEST CAM IS MOVING ON
CLASSY Cameron McEvoy wants to confront his mental demons head-on after admitting there was some truth in head coach Jacco Verhaeren’s suggestion “stage fright” cost him an Olympic gold medal in the 100m freestyle.
McEvoy endured a heartbreaking 24 hours at the Olympic Aquatic Centre when he placed seventh in his pet 100m freestyle final and then was eliminated in the semifinals of the 50m freestyle yesterday when 11th in 21.89sec.
McEvoy refused to confirm a sore throat had contributed to his poor performance or offer any excuses because he didn’t want to detract from teammate Kyle Chalmers and his stunning gold medal win.
But the 22-year-old prom- ised to confront how he mentally fell apart on the big stage.
“Mentally, it definitely felt like a different experience to what I’m usually used to when I step up and do my best times,” he said.
“I’m sure on a stage like this with an outcome like that there is no way it’s not even a little bit mental so it would play a part but I’m not sitting here trying to pinpoint it just at the moment.”
Asked if he felt offended the head coach blamed his mental state of the defeat, McEvoy was accepting of the critique.
“If you look at it logically, regardless of who says it, it is probably still true anyway,” McEvoy said.
“It doesn’t change the fact that it happened. I guess it’s always hard as an athlete to I guess admit to when you step up and don’t quite deliver mentally.
“You always like to think that you have some level of mental toughness to the sport. It is a small blow to the personal ego when you accept that but I think it’s the first step in realising and improving upon it. Just accepting it is what it is and not trying to build a road around it and hoping for the best next time you come to it.
“It’s better to face it head on and deal with it like that.”
Verhaeren simply said McEvoy’s issue was mental and they’d work to address it.
“It looked like he was frozen, how do you call it, stage fright, or whatever and it had nothing to do with any physical, technical, tactical choices whatsoever,” Verhaeren said.
“He just wasn’t there at the right time. That is mental and what part of mental we have to find out.”
McEvoy’s coach Richard Scarce said there were no indications anything was wrong with McEvoy in the warm up, but throughout the race he was just a bit off where they’d planned to be in their race strategy and everything fell to pieces.
The 22-year-old is in the finest physical shape of his career and Scarce felt perhaps external pressure of coming in as the overwhelming world No.1 weighed heavily on him.
“I think just he just couldn’t get up for the occasion. The external expectations as well and in the moment it didn’t come together,” Scarce said.
“You don’t want it to happen now at the Olympics but it just wasn’t right for him on the day. We just have to get past that and he will.”
McEvoy was overwhelmed by the support he’d received within his own team, from rivals and the Australian public since the 100m.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of people about it, the amount of support I’ve received not only from friends and family but the general public around the world and also my competitors, too, I was really surprised the amount of competitors who came up to me and spoke to me about it and were supporting me about it,” he said.
“That was surprising and comforting and it really helps with being able to deal with it.”