Years of training, special diets and elite coaching may not be enough to win an Olympic medal. That is when athletes turn to special socks, pictures of their kids or fortune cookies.
Superstition runs deep in humans, even those jocks seeking to represent the US in the Winter Olympics next month in Vancouver, Canada. Many are looking for a slight edge, and sometimes they look in some strange places.
“If I have a good race, whatever socks I’m wearing, whatever turtleneck I’m wearing, that tends to be the go-to,” ski crosser Casey Puckett said. “It generally is the undergarments.”
“I like to believe in the skill and preparedness,” Puckett said. “But at the same time, I do recognize that there is a bit of luck that comes into it.”
Sometimes it is bad luck, as Puckett’s push to make his fifth Olympics is in jeopardy after a severe shoulder injury in France.
Speed skater Chad Hedrick puts his faith in fortune cookies.
“Before the 2006 games, a fortune said ‘your golden opportunity is coming soon,’” said Hedrick, who went on to win gold, silver and bronze medals in Turin, Italy.
As a result, he tends to keep the fortunes he likes, with a supply of 25 to 30 on hand.
Superstition and sport have been linked forever. You have baseball players who refuse to discuss a no-hitter in progress. Some tennis players refuse to hold three balls in one hand. Golfers believe carrying coins in their pockets is good luck. Gladiators in ancient Rome refused to wear toga No. 13 (OK, that one is not true).
Skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace keeps a picture of her two-year-old daughter in her helmet and a tracing in marker of the child’s hand prints on her sled.
“I always kiss my hand and then slap her hand like I’m giving her five,” she said.
Skier Michelle Roark wears the same perfume to each race, and makes the scent herself. That was after her sports psychologist suggested she visualize skiing well with all five of her senses before events. She found she could hear, see, taste and feel success, but not smell it.
“I had no idea what it smelled like to ski well,” she said.
Dissatisfied with fragrances she tried, she started her own perfume and cologne manufacturing company called Phinominal and the fragrances she makes are all natural.
Cross country skier Liz Stephen rotates a couple pairs of lucky socks but wears the same gloves for races. She realizes that seems silly.
“I think the more superstitious you get, the harder it is to just remember that you are out there to race,” she said.
For that reason, cross-country skier Billy Demong “threw superstition out the window a long time ago.”
“Rituals always get in the way, whereas routines get you onto the podium,” he said. “There are definitely no lucky socks for me.”
“I think superstitions and lucky charms are for people that don’t have confidence,” freestyle skier Jeret “Speedy” Peterson said.
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