I love watching the Olympics. I love sports, and it is awe inspiring to see the worlds best athletes in any sport perform. What I have trouble watching is most of the interviews with athletes who earn anything but a gold medal. With some of them, you'd think they came in dead last, even after winning a silver medal.

It used to be that when athletes were asked about their childhood dreams they would say "I want to go to the Olympics". Now the dream isn't just to go to the Olympics, the response I most often hear now is "I want to win GOLD at the Olympics". It's just not enough anymore for them to simply compete with the best athletes in the world, it's GOLD or NOTHING. Of course we would all want to win the gold. I'm not arguing with that. That is the motivation to train the hundreds, even thousands of hours to get to the level of competition that they are at. But I have a news flash. There can only be one gold medalist in any event! Everyone else...well, they must just be losers. At least that is what you would think when watching many of today's athletes interviews.

Now not all athletes are like this. I've been very impressed by some of them. Take Apollo Anton Oho for instance. He can know with a certain amount of certainty that he is the best short track skater in the world. But in races where he hasn't won the gold, or even in races where he failed to win a medal at all, he has never allowed for any pity. He smiles and says, "this is what the Olympics are all about". In the race where he became the most decorated American Winter Olympian, he won Silver. In his interview immediately following, it was apparent that he knew he had the race won, all except for that one slip right at the end. But he didn't whine about it. Rather he just seemed to play it over in his mind and with a little chuckle and big grin would say something like "Dang! I had it". But that was it! He still won a medal! He was able to compete with the best in the world.

Some athletes try to say all of the right words, but are pouting so much that it's hard to believe what they are saying. I think the sport determines a lot of how athletes react to medaling. I can't stand to watch figure skating (for a number of reasons), but the pouting is among the biggest. After a skater or pair skates they will sit and just pout as their scores are calculated. What's worse is when their coach gives them the "You've let your entire country down" look. Now I know there is a lot of emotion riding on a single performance, and if Olympic dreams come to an abrupt halt with a slip and fall, there are often tears. That is understandable, not because they didn't win gold, but because they didn't do what they knew they could do. It's when the pouting goes over to the medals ceremony. Silver and Bronze medalists not smiling as they receive their medal.

Team sports can also be hard, because you go head to head against another team, and even though you have medaled, you lost a match. The potential only exists for a single team to go undefeated. Everyone else ends with a loss. But that is known going in to the games. Athletes need to suck it up and show a better attitude when being interviewed. Little kids look up to them, and what kind of a role model are they when they are only happy when they win the gold. How realistic is that in life? If you work really hard, you will always win, and nothing will ever go wrong!? No, i'd rather have my kids see that it's okay to be happy even when things don't always go your way.