What happens when the dream of competing for your country at the highest level is shattered in breath-taking circumstances. Where a team loses its harmony, its soul and its morality... all in the quest for success? What are your young athletes being taught when defeat is so unacceptable it turns friends into enemies in an instant? And what sort of facade is 'the spirit of endeavour' in the Olympic Games when its ruling body ostracises and humiliates its own in the event of failure? A humiliation involving an epic cover-up and the 'silencing' of the aggrieved.
How did this occur?
In the ultimate of team sports, where any weakness can be an anchor to one's chances, there is a passenger. A competitor with un-matched physical capabilities in power and endurance yet possessing a serious mental flow. One which has left other team-mates furious after failure in past events. The flaw? In the head of the battle the mind tells the body to stop. But in the immediate aftermath there are no serious sights of distress. There is denial.
The competitor has carried this flaw into the most sought-after sporting arena on earth... the Olympic games. Carried it with the promise to her team-mates that she had conquered her problem, a promise repeated over arduous months of preparation. Rising before dawn and training for hours with one singular goal... the Olympic games, the greatest celebration on earth.
A trust develops. A bond so rigid it seems unbreakable.
Then in the preliminary races to the Olympic final the 'flaw' surfaces again.
The nine women are panicking. At the eleventh hour it becomes apparent the 'flaw' could cost them 4 years of hard work. The trust is about to be shattered.
Sitting on the banks of the Olympic rowing course is a reserve. One who has watched her Olympic dream snatched away by the vagaries of selection. She knows she should be in the crew. Other team member think she should be included for the final. Her story is one of fight-back from previous disappointment to be line for her life's dream... the Olympic games.
But the coach, a hardened figure with two Olympic Gold medals to his name, does nothing.
This same coach knew the problem existed with the other competitor but thought he could handle it. Yet incredibly no sports psychologist is brought in. Why not? How could this girl be allowed to compete at the Olympic games with more than the potential to erase four years of dedication from her fellow team-mates?
Then in the main event, the Olympic final, the fears are realised. A medal seems possible at the halfway point of the race before the dramatic collapse. The other team-mates are exhorting the fallen to keep going. The boat captain is hitting her struggling friend. The crew is no longer a team. It has disintegrated under the harshest of lights.
It's a chronic disappointment and in the absence of any great support crew on shore, the voracious media is access to their collective grief and trauma. A trauma compounded by their team-mate's inability to accept her failure. Emotion overrides everything. And when (if) the emotion subsides, what is the fall-out for the sport and for the protagonists?
Nine women (excluding the coxswain), from a variety of backgrounds, are brought together to represent their country and leave soured and embittered by their devastating experience. They leave humiliated and embarrassed. Some of these young women had focussed their whole lives to arrive ready at one moment in time for the performance of their lives. It's gone.
Why is winning so important?
Why does the pressure to succeed envelop our very being and have the capacity to destroy relationships and change personalities?
How can a sporting infrastructure shun the very women it has promoted?
What turned several normal young women into beasts?
'The Eight'... A shattered dream.
