The competitive aspect of the Olympics doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for me. It’s the individual athletes and what drives them that are intriguing.

But that is the case with anyone who is prepared to fail in front of others just for the love of the performance. The desire to succeed is so great people take huge personal risks, emotionally and physically, to participate in whatever it is they have decided to do.

Take American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn as an example. Her story is just one of the amazing tales that will emerge from the 2010 Olympics that start today in Vancouver.

She has a badly bruised shin that would likely have most of us barely able to walk a set of stairs. She’s working round the clock with a team of medical professional to ensure she will be able to compete. My bet is she’ll ski — in serious pain — and win.

Then there is Jennifer Heil, a Canadian freestyle skier from Alberta. She is touted as the person to bring home Canada’s first gold medal. Now that’s no pressure on a person going into world competition. If she wins bronze, will she be a big disappointment to her country? What if she doesn’t win at all?

With that expectation sitting on her shoulders, it’s incredible she competes at all. The average person would just find a groundhog burrow, snuggle in and not come out for six weeks.

But Heil, a world cup winner several times over, is no ordinary person. Here’s a quote from a recent interview to a Canadian Press reporter about her training regime.

"In order to keep pushing that bar up you have to feel that pain," she said of the intense sessions at their gym in west-end Montreal. "So if you walked in on one of our workouts ... we're on the floor, we can't move, we feel like ripping our legs off they hurt so bad."

I have a difficult time holding my legs extended off the ground for 30 seconds in one of those killer abdominal exercises. In fact, I quit Pilates after two weeks because it hurt. But then the reason I have no difficulty admitting that publicly is because I am — thankfully — not a champion.

Then there is the Canadian Men’s Hockey Team. How many times have we heard sports commentators say, “the country’s hopes are resting on them and the gold medal means everything.”

This team of exceptional athletes will be relegated to loser status if they don’t win Olympic gold. I don’t follow hockey, but this absolute conviction that Canada must and will win suggests to me that their competitors can’t be very good. The Swedes, the Russians, the Americans apparently will pose no challenge. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so arrogant as to say the gold must come to us.

It seems wrong to set such high expectations on athletes who work so hard to be the best of the best. The focus on medals by the athletes is admirable. Few people go into a competition to lose, but if they happen to place second, third or even fourth, spectators sitting safely on their living room couch have little right to criticize.

Not to sound like a pansy, but we should admire people who can compete under intense pressure. Maybe my expectations are a little low, but I’m impressed when a high school basketball player sinks a shot from the free throw line when all eyes in the gym are on him or her.

People who always have a lot to say from the cheap seats, but never take a risk leave themselves open to a dose of criticism. They don’t seem to realize that it’s not easy for people to take a chance with the possibility of public scorn hanging over them.

People who put themselves on the line whether it’s at the Olympics as an athlete or a performance in their hometown have some kind of inner grit that didn’t come my way and I admire that. Take three Kamloops women who, at age 40 or so, decided to try their hand at a comedy show.

Hell on Heels, other wise known as Tara Holmes, Lisa McCauley and Mia Sheldon, all three with full-time day jobs, each put on a half-hour comedy sketch in front of an audience, some friendly, some not.

In their spare time, they write and practise — in front of a mirror, I guess — and then fairly flawlessly individually spin their stories for 30 minutes. Now, not everyone is going to like the show. It can be a bit graphic. So they take that risk too. People they see everyday on the street could see their show and become a critic.

For the most part, they’ve had rave reviews and draw sold-out crowds whenever they perform. Fans help a performer keep coming back. But the idea of walking on a stage, particularly the first couple of times, to put on a show before strangers and friends — I don’t know what’s worse — takes huge courage.

So if you are one of those people who like to rip people who don’t perform quite up to your high standards — whether they are Olympic athletes or amateur entertainers — consider what you do in your life that’s out of your comfort zone.

It might make the Olympics a bit more enjoyable if there is a little less focus on the medals and a little more attention on the guts it took to get the athletes there in the first place.

Susan Duncan is city editor of The Daily News. Her column appears Fridays. Email her at sduncan@kamloopsnews.ca.