It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin and I've spoken with athletes who for years afterward have been tormented by the knowledge that had they done something ever so slightly different they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
You know when you're young and you see a play in high school and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around.
