How Does The Lack of Audience Affect Olympic Athlete Performance?

The story of Simone Biles has dominated Olympic headlines, but one interesting perspective that I read offered a broader view of the story. It was all about how performing in empty arenas without audiences may be harming athlete performances at the Games.

Unlike many other sports that were played over the past year in stadiums with artificial noise or cardboard cutouts of fans to simulate a crowd ... the Olympics have reportedly not done any of that. As a result, many who are there in person describe the experience as “bleak” and “eerie.”

It turns out, there is plenty of science to prove what we might already assume to be true. Elite athletes feed off audience energy and perform better with a crowd. Without that, it becomes easier to get into your own head, feel more pressure to perform and miss out on the powerful boost that a live audience can offer. As the article notes, without a real audience, “the stakes feel lower.”