Sports psychologist Dr. John Murray is providing Journal Star readers daily updates from the Olympics. The former tennis pro and Florida resident is working with judo competitor Adler Volmar. The goal is to offer insight into the mental and psychological aspect of sports, right up to Volmar’s matches and immediately following them. The doctor will add some Beijing observations both inside and outside the sports venues. Murray’s full work and profile can be found on his own Web site: https://johnfmurray.com/
August 11, 2008 – Tuesday Morning Blog
We all got in to Beijing quite late last night and made it over to the taxi stand around 10PM. It took a bit of haggling to make sure we were not overcharged $60 and the three of us squeezed into a small taxi ride that took about 45 minutes only cost $18! The bargains ended abruptly in the hotel, however, as a bottle of Evian water cost $10. The city is vast and spralling and we did not notice anything that unusual about the air quality late at night. So now on a Tuesday morning we all had a great buffet breakfast consiting of dumplings, rice, snake sausauge (no not real snake), breads and eggs. I asked if the mild was pasteurized and it took 4 or 5 attendants to finally say they did not know. But since this is the 4-star China Resources Hotel I am assuming all will be fine. TV here is interesting. There are a few English stations including CNN and CTV, and at least 5 or 6 different stations were covering the Olympic games so I had the pleasure of watching women’s polo (US vs. China), some of the women’s basketball (US vs. China) and weight lifting.
We are all excited because today we go over to the Olympic village and get a tour with NBC and Telemundo while meeting up with Adler Volmar here for the first time. My goal really is to just make sure he is aggressive and hungry as Adler historically has a tendency to need adversity in a match to really turn it on. He is such a nice guy but nice guys don’t win gold medals unless they keep their perspective and realize that everyone out here would like to send him home with nothing to show for it but an Olympic appearance. I did the sport psychology evaluation on Adler and have now worked with him for a month, and I will say that he is perhaps the strongest athlete mentally that I have ever seen. Something tells me that he very well might toss the judo world on their head and walk away with this gleaming gold medal. Nobody expects it … now if i can only keep him hungry, mad, and on fire I think he has a great chance!
Dr. John F. Murray attended the Beijing Olympics to provide his unique perspective from the world of Sports Psychology.