Look beyond Du Lis’failure

As the defending champion of women’s 10m air rifle, Du Li failed to realize her aspiration to defend her champion only to finish only fifth, and lost her championship, much beyond people's expectations. It is said that enormous home-crowd pressure is the key reason for her failure in the event. Great home soil pressure took its toll on our Chinese athlete especially on the opening day of the intense Games competition.
Under so big pressure, Du Li wilted down in her bid to win the Games’s first gold medal, while Tan Xue, another famous sabre player, and also world women’s sabre champion, lost in the quarterfinals in enormous pressure. Conincidentally, Ren Jie, the record holder of women’s 10m air pistol, failed to enter the quarterfinals also because of her tremendous psychological pressure.
Coincidentally, the first three gold medalists of our country are all the debutants of the Olympic Games. It is fully proved that a newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger. Because they are young, they do not have any mental and psychological pressure or ideological burden, therefore, they can give their full play to their best level and finally create their excellent competition results.
On the contrary, the veterans are always shouldering emormous pressure psychologically and ideologically, and they have failed to do a better performance they are desiring for. Before the competition, Du Li is widely tipped to win the Beijing Olympic’s first gold medal to respire the nation’s enthusiasm and restore the host’s pride hours to make much more achievements. Unluckily, much to our disappointment, Du did not manage it to her compatriots successfully.
The same situation has happened to Tan Xue and Ren Jie. People have placed great hopes on them like they have done to themselves. It is hoped that they can achieve a breakthrong to bring great surprises to our compatriots mainly because they have been doing well in various events before the Olympic Games.
So they have carried more and more burden besides the game itself, and they are psychologically in strong interference from the outside world, so that they can not put themseves into the competition itself heart and soul. For them, competition is not competition itself but certain things outside the game. More of them are all from excessive propagandization and publicity, and sometimes exaggerated media reports. All these are from unrealistic expectations and dreams of our compatriots, which have resulted from what we Chinese people have wanted too much to prove through the Olympic Games. So they can not lose, and they are not permitted to lose and they are not tolerated to lose the games. It is very difficult to be an athlete of success, especially to be a very very successful athlete. Winning is not what only belongs to you, but to our compatriots across the country.
If they want to have a new start, we must remove the pressure off them. Warding off pressure is the key to their new success.
I wish them good luck!