Losing hurts, whether it's on the sports pitch or a TV talent show. But can it be good for us, asks Catherine Foley
IT'S A CLICHE but grown men wept after the crushing defeat suffered by Waterford's hurling team in the All-Ireland final earlier this month.
It was the county's first final for 45 years. The team were up against Kilkenny, giants of the championship, who were hoping to win their 31st All-Ireland title. Waterford, a minnow in comparison, was going for its third ever All-Ireland win.
Hopes were high when the whistle blew, but, within minutes, disappointment took over and Waterford's chances dribbled away. It was a cruel, resounding defeat. There was no hope. The dream was over. The county is still in mourning.
Was the defeat as crushing for Kerry footballers, who had to contend with losing last weekend when they were beaten in the All-Ireland final by Tyrone? Kerry's hope of winning three cups in a row went up in smoke. The sight of dejected players returning silently into Tralee's railway station the day after the match told its own story. The heartbreak was palpable.
According to Dr Patrick Ryan, director of clinical psychology at the University of Limerick, "different levels of expectation" are what determine the degrees of defeat.
He points to the fact that "because Waterford had been so starved of success, expectations levels probably ran a little higher than they should have, therefore the defeat is more traumatic. In the Tyrone/Kerry situation, the expectations on both sides were probably evenly enough matched."
In all team sports, there is a process called group-think, says Ryan.
"One of the dangers is that, if it goes unchecked, it can become almost mythical. If you take a belief that a team should win a game because it hasn't won for 50 years, that belief is quite distorted, but in a group situation it can easily get a hold.
"Whereas if you have a belief that you are only as good as the last match you've won and you have no right to win anything, you have to go out and earn the achievement, then you don't get the group-think dynamic as strong, it's more controlled."
Top managers such as Alex Ferguson with Manchester United, and Brian Cody with Kilkenny's senior hurlers "know how to rev it up or dampen it down. If things are a bit flat they can stoke it up," says Ryan.
Disappointment was a bitter pill to swallow at the recent Olympic Games in Beijing for Jamie Costin, the athlete and race walker, who has suffered major setbacks in his sporting career. He returned to Ireland last month from China after taking part in the 50km race walk having finished 46th out of a total field of 62 walkers.
"I'm not beating myself up over it," he says. "I was very strong, I hadn't missed any training."
He was ready in every way, he adds. But in the end, the heat and the humidity on the day were too severe and his body was unable to cope.
When the rawness has gone out of it, he says he'll sit down with his coach and go through his performance. "You always have to re-evaluate exactly the way you approached it."
Costin's journey to the Olympics was even more inspiring when one takes into account that he broke his back in a serious traffic accident four years ago.
It happened in Athens, as the Olympic games were about to begin, and left him lying on his back for six months. After years of preparation and training, he had been knocked down before he'd even had a chance to compete in the games.
"I took it day by day. I didn't think long-term," he says, and adds that it's the same for everybody in their day-to-day jobs. "You take it step-by-step every day. It's just that with sport there are extreme highs and lows of emotion."
Now, undaunted by his defeat in Beijing and committed as ever to his sport, he is about to begin training for the world championships in Berlin next August.
BUT THE CONSEQUENCES of losing in sport are not as serious compared to, for example, young people competing on television and losing, says Patrick Ryan.
On RTÉ1's current Class Act series, defeated contestants have to face criticism and rejection from the judges each week. In one recent programme, a young singer, bravely holding back her tears, warned the judges that they'll be "gutted" when they see her win ITV's X Factor in the future.
"There's an implied assumption that the judges got it wrong. It's what is called deflection rhetoric," explains Ryan. "Politicians use this all the time. They are very good at creating a distance between themselves and the actual event/defeat. You deflect away from how you, the person, was defeated when you talk about it, 'well, it was circumstances, it was beyond my control' or 'I did the best I could'. Sometimes we need to say to people, 'well you didn't do the best you could, in fact there are other people who are better than you and you won't make this grade'."
That is why, he says, coaches, mentors and those people who work with young people are so important in helping young people "use the experience as a motivating factor for future performance enhancement" rather than let it become "a paralysing factor out of which you actually stay stuck in the fact that you were defeated and you can't use the experience to enhance yourself".