6/10/08

As participants we could always feel the Olympic Trials approaching, those ultimate deciders of glory and misery. We could sense them--all the plans, all the hopes, all the visualizing. That's what elevates champions, of course. Visualizing every jump or throw, every race situation, every opponent. Then, before a crowd insane to make it happen, the Trials' immense lens would take all that imagining and focus it into pressure. Some psyches it would crush. Others it fired to historic performance.