RESEARCH

The OCRC, the Olympic Communication Research Committee, has defined this type of athlete's narrative as "a chain of events in causeeffect relationship occurring in time and space... the dynamic of the motor forces that drive the text forward, of the desires that connect narrative ends and beginnings, and make the extual middle a highly charged field of force."

With this in mind, I searched out a recent claim by the euroscientists
of the Scientific American: "... We are a pattern-seeking storytelling primates trying to make sense of what is currently happening around us... and wanting to know what others are feeling at the present moment."

I began thinking about which televised sports would be best served by providing an athlete's inner voice following the moment of his live competition. here's an example of what the immediate playback of a ski
jumper might sound like over his playback.

Talking Replay Audio (Voice of ski jumper) "While I'm waiting for the bell, I'm trying to avoid any fear that could make me late on my take-off. What I'll be doing is imagining gathering speed and pushing upward on the takeoff. Then when I'm in the air and leaning over skis, I'll be visualizing my landing before it happens and imagining how I'll be flexing my knees and keeping my skis parallel to each other for a balanced touch-down."

I checked out the Internet and found a recent research study, funded by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. A purposive sampling of personal interview segments from various televised international sports events was examined to analyze the use of
descriptors---those which were third-person phrases or sentences used to describe or called attention to an athlete's inner emotional states. The third person examples apparently were taken from appearances"she's a nervous wreck," "quietly confident," "she's completely focused," "feeling proud," "he has fantastic concentration."