Resources > Education > Parents on Race Day

Updated 1/10/08 @ 1225.

Below is an excerpt from No Pain, No Gain? by Richard Taylor, (c) 2002, Mechanic Street Press

Race Day for parents

[Here are some] race-day hints about the behavior of young, even mature, athletes which can make it easier to understand and support a son or daughter. I will try to answer the bewilderment about peculiar behavior pre- and post-race.

First, you need to remember that competition requires the athlete to be alone and in a very compact, deep and exciting experience, a complex mix of long- and short-term preparation, confidence, anxiety, adrenaline, feelings of both daring and fascination, of both weakness and uncertainty. All of this may only belong to your son or daughter, alone. All of the feelings must be in his or her total possession. Your child must deal with them, convert them into excitement, calculation, strategy, presence of mind and body, power and speed.

Despite your love and anxieties for your child, your own deep wishes and most noble intentions, you cannot help on race day and should not intrude on the young athlete’s necessarily private space. If you do, your child will unconsciously begin to take care of you. His energy and focus will be distracted from his race in order to satisfy your need to help. His focus diverted to you, your child’s grasp of the specific task at hand will loosen; his ability to perform will diminish. Sensing this may elicit a belligerent, ungracious response from the athlete. Feelings may be confused even hurt, on both sides. Nobody wishes this result, but it happens, again and again. I have even heard it described by Olympic Team athletes whose parents went to the Games to support them. It is perhaps the parent’s most anguishing task to let a youngster own his performance, alone.

Parents should begin backing off several days before a major event. Feeling their bodies peaked, their “wiring is bare of insulation,” young athletes may well become a more extreme version of what they normally are, more talkative, more brooding, more distracted, more feisty or emotionally brittle. Parents wish to make them feel good, be as normal as possible. Not knowing where to start, they ask the basic loving and courteous question, “How’re you doing?” or “Did you have a good workout?”

Wrong questions! What under normal circumstances are so helpful and graceful may lead in an immediate pre-competition period to overdoses of self-evaluation: “How am I?” It’s too late for that question; now it can only detract, and every athlete knows it. Inside there can only be one conviction: “I am excellently prepared, eager, ready.” No questions. On the other hand, subjects which have nothing to do with skiing are wonderful—books, music, what is happening at home. I oriented late-arriving staff and guests to this notion with a World Junior Nordic Championship team I had in Norway for training in 1984, and the reduction in tension was palpable—as was the increase in quiet confidence and training execution. It also seemed as if we all had an overabundance of time to do what was needed. Nothing felt hurried. When that is the case, athletes grow more and more confident that they are prepared for the race.

More than anything else, parents, it is your mere presence which is most powerful, more so than any words you might say, more than any help you would most dearly wish to offer. I know the anguish of such separation and silence. Unfortunately, the coach cannot be of any help to you, to answer questions or provide information, for the coach, on race day, must be as totally fixed in his or her concentration as the athlete. He can be available only to athlete requests and the myriad compact requirements of the day. All the while, believe me, he too must also fight the urge to ask the same question, “How are you; how do you feel?”

Here is a good operating program for parents. Separate from your child 45 minutes before start time. An hour is better yet. The athlete’s warm-up must begin at that point, the last trip to the toilet accomplished, equipment set, number on. The warm-up goes 20-10-5, 20 minutes easy, 10 at threshold, five at race pace (in some variation or other). This is completed as close as possible to actual start time, usually within a few minutes. Nobody should interrupt this warm-up, even a coach.

Enjoy all the skiers. Don’t get too deeply involved in the competition, comparing your kid to others. Who happens to beat whom is really not very important, and measuring a youngster’s performance in that way sets up external norms of comparison rather than more effective internal values of progressive mastery. Each is also so different a mix of things right now, and not one of them will be the same next year. A given day’s results hardly approximate the complexity or mystery of it all. Each kid is giving 100%. Their results need no interpretation. Accept, admire. I frequently ask my kids after the race, “How did you ski?” They often reply, “I don’t know; I haven’t seen the results yet.” Neither have I, and purposely ask before they have seen the results. They need to feel each moment along the trail how they are going. Thinking in terms of results only distracts them from that task. I believe what they tell me and am satisfied. Any other, contradictory, thoughts they may have later also come from them. They know, and must learn to know and trust their own feelings for speed and intelligence in racing.

And afterward? When he or she is ready, your young athlete will seek you out. Most athletes want to be alone for a while, to recover their composure, to reflect, warm down a half hour or more, until they have reflected upon the race and returned to themselves. Before they feel thus restored, they are still full with their effort. Inquiry or comment, great praise or expression of comfort, beyond the acceptance of a touch or pat on the shoulder feels like an intrusion. All kids are different, but everyone will seek out parents in a time appropriate to him- or herself. (Only in cases where an athlete’s despair or pain extends solitary behavior beyond an hour should he be sought out, then most usually by the coach.) As for the coach, as joyful as good performances are to him, he must be just as thorough in seeking out his skiers who are not so happy with themselves. The coach is better again than parents, for often a young skier will feel the worse for thinking he has not done his parents hopes their due.

The separation before the race, [and] the delay in contact after the race, are filled with certain despair, even anguish, at times a sense of rejection, by any parent. A righteous sense of injustice, even anger, may be felt. My child is fearful, and I should not comfort her? Why won’t she let me? Can’t I give my son some good advice?

The answer is no: The athlete must prepare and then recover alone, or with a companion. He or she wants to leave you for the separate world of the race, and to return to you on his or her own terms and under his or her own control. Less than friendly or courteous responses before or after the race should not worry you too much. They are born in the anxiety and emotion of the performance and in no way alter the supreme importance a parent’s simply being there has for a child.

How do you know what behavior your child athlete likes best? Ask him. Tell her you are not sure and do not want to intrude. You will get helpful answers, and that communication itself makes for empowering, loving moments for both parent and athlete. Your presence, however silent or distant, will always, mysteriously, impart strength to your child. You will beam strength with your smile, seen or unseen.

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