SOCHI, Russia (AP) - The Olympics are the athletic pinnacle. The athletes who arrived in Sochi for the Winter Games got here thanks in large part due to an innate will to win and a competitive edge that knows no bounds.
Yet so many show up here knowing they have absolutely no chance to win. So rather than going for gold, they have to change their goals and set more attainable standards.
Swiss women’s hockey player Jessica Lutz knows all about that. The sport is dominated by the Canadians and the Americans and the rest of the world is still trying to catch up. Switzerland lost to Canada 5-0 and the United States 9-0 this week.
“We know we’re going to get lots of shots and goals against us, but we’ll tell each other let’s just keep going no matter what the score is,” says Lutz, who lives in Washington, D.C.
So instead of going for the upset, the Swiss just try to limit the damage.
“They got five goals early on. But after that we stuck with it,” Lutz said of the loss to the Americans. “They didn’t have goals for a while. That’s success for us. Maybe there’s like 20-30 minutes of the game where there were no goals for them. That’s something that we look on that’s positive. After the game, that’s what we’ll say to each other.”
— By Jon Krawczynski — Twitter https://twitter.com/APKrawczynski
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Associated Press reporters will be filing dispatches about happenings in and around Sochi during the 2014 Winter Games. Follow AP journalists covering the Olympics on Twitter: https://apne.ws/1c3WMiu
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