Is it just me, or does the Olympics hit harder as a parent?

In his new column, 'Paul's POV', the Sydney dad says: "We’d be a little less judgmental if we imagined it was our own child climbing out of the pool in tears." 

For anyone with my last name, the first week of this Olympics has been a fun time.

Watching the achievements of Australia’s swimmers has been a window into how the other McKeons (and McKeowns) live.

I’ve woken up each morning to headlines like “McKeon dethrones Thorpe as greatest”, “McKeon makes history” and “McKeown wins gold”.

Sadly, they're not talking about me. Or anyone in my family.

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"I watched my daughter with pride"

While neither Emma nor Kaylee is any relation I will tell you, if you really twist my arm, that I was once, briefly, the least capable member of my high school swim squad, with a 50-metre freestyle time approaching 30 seconds (at least, that’s how I remember it).

Swimming is the one and only sport in which I’ve ever shown anything resembling competence.

So, it was with much pride that, as I watched my eleven-year-old daughter’s lessons recently, I noticed she had the graceful, fluid freestyle stroke I’d always aspired to.

While it is fair to say no-one's Paris 2024 times are under threat from her just yet, my hope is that we might spend some quality time this summer doing laps together at our local pool. So I do see swimming in her future.

But this Olympics somehow means much more as a dad.

Jess Fox with her dad, Richard Fox. Image: Getty/Insert: Paul McKeon

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"How would I feel if it was my child?"

Flashback to more than a decade ago, I still remember looking at her on that first day in the hospital and realising the way I looked at the world had changed. I was a new parent and suddenly responsible for a life (two in fact, as she's a twin) other than my own.

As a kid and younger man, I never gave any thought to the parents of the sportspeople on TV. As far as I was concerned, Denis Lillee was born with a mullet and moustache, Arthur Beatson could have been carved from a block of stone and Peter Brock made by Holden at Fishermans Bend.

But recently, at a pub, I bumped into the grandparents of a young AFL player who’d just played his first game for the GWS Giants. They were so excited you could have believed they’d just walked off the ground themselves. And that was after a Giants loss.

So, it has been interesting this week reading the commentary on our Olympians and wondering not, ‘how would I react if I was in that situation’ but instead ‘how would I feel if it was my child?’

I agree 100% with Pilar Grace’s point of view earlier this week on critics of Aussie skateboarder, 14-year-old Chloe Covell. I’d add it is really not anyone else’s business whether she was ready for the pressures of the Olympics. That’s for Chloe and her parents to decide, not us.

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"We need to watch the Olympics as proud parents"

I think the bravest thing sportspeople do isn’t to walk into an arena aware they might not win. It is that they do so knowing only one person or team can win. And they do it fully aware of how bad losing feels.

That's the risk which is simply part of the gig. 

That’s one reason I think the recent criticism of athletes showing emotion after a loss is misplaced. After all, we want passion in sport. Why else would anyone put themselves through what elite athletes do if they weren’t passionate?

And we have a role to play in that excitement. It’s a two-way street. We can’t expect athletes to care enough to put their lives on hold for the four, eight, twelve or sixteen years of effort to be at the peak of their sport, and then also face a bad day on the mat with a shrug of the shoulders and a quiet ‘meh’.

I think we could all do with spending a little more time taking the perspective of a proud parent or grandparent when watching sport and remembering the incredible effort that’s required even to get near competing at an Olympics.

I think we’d be a little less judgmental if we imagined it was our own child climbing out of the pool in tears.

And it took the potential for another McKeon to become an Aussie swimming sensation in Melbourne in eight years’ time, for me to really see that.

Originally published as Is it just me, or does the Olympics hit harder as a parent?