Karen-W
How long do we have to wait for GP assignments?
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Oh, please. He's going to be happy to come home with an Olympic medal, that's how he's going to feel.Red herring? Sorry, don’t really agree. You’re looking at it strictly from a points perspective, which is way too narrow.
Pretty much every athlete who’s ever described their first Olympic experience talks about how overwhelming it is, how nothing can prepare you for it, etc, etc. In a situation like that, are you really going to throw a newbie in to pinch hit at the last minute? He might not be able to lose that many points for the team, but how do you think he’s going to feel if he underperforms badly, which is not exactly far fetched? Do you think maybe there’s a reason why they might not want to put a 16-year old kid in that position?
And, really, talk about low hopes for him, in this hypothetical scenario of yours, saying it's "not exactly far fetched" that he will underperform badly.
Even if he doesn't skate as well as hoped in the TE FS, chances are that will light a fire in his belly to come back stronger than before and prove himself in the individual event - and, if we're talking specifically about Ilia, he might be a rather inconsistent competitor at this stage of his career but he has shown resiliency. His first JGP this year - he didn't have a really strong FS but he came back more focused than ever and put up the highest total score for JGP Men at his 2nd JGP. Then, at CS Austria, he was certainly disappointed with his terrible 13th place in the SP but he rebounded to 2nd in the FS. You're making way too much of "oh, his FEELINGS" than is fair to him or even consistent with how he's competed so far this fall. Furthermore, I expect that the rest of the Team USA TE skaters would rally around him before he even skated and tell him "don't worry how you do, we've got this and we're coming home with silver, no matter what you do."
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