I often look at the faces of medallists at national or international events and in many cases, it seems the silver medallist is looking at the gold medallist and syaing 'I'm so gutted - I was that close to gold!' and the bronze medallist is much happier, looking at the rest of the competitors saying 'I was that close to not getting anything at all!'

It would seem then, that appropriate goals are the key, and that success is relative - some of the cyclists & swimmers may well have been competing at the World Championships for experience so they can be successful later in their careers (at the Olympics for example) - does this equate to failure in the short term?

Maybe more questions here than answers, but isn't that always the case!!??
 

I see Mj pipped me to the post for a possible explanation as to Vicki Pendleton's reaction to getting the silver medal. It may be off on a tangent a little but in any case I shall expand a little on his suggestions and role with the opportunity to introduce the notion of counterfactual thinking to anyone else who might be interested.

Whilst Im sure her expectations based on her training and previous competitions may have played a role in her disappointment, one plausible explanation might be the comparison she made to 'what might have been' if things had of been different, or her 'counterfactual' thoughts.

A paper by Medvec, Madey and Gilovich (1995) suggested that winning silver may induce 'it might have been better' thoughts (e.g I could have won Gold) with negative emotional responses. In contrast winning bronze may evoke 'it might have been worse' thoughts' (e.g I could have missed out a medal) producing a more positive emotional response. Hence, doing objectively better may in some circumstances leave you feeling subjectively worse.
When races come down to seconds and milliseconds like that one - it may be easy to imagine how things might have turned out differently.

It would be interesting to watch the footage and examine the bronze medallists reaction!

Additionally of course, as Claire said, it may be because the athletes themselves may take the view that anything less than gold is not enough, but i couldn't resist the opportunity to throw a little bit of theory into the discussion!
 

Some perspectives from a simple coach's perspective...

I totally agree with Claire's point on aiming high, and that to develop world class athletes we need to help them set world class goals to get there. There's plenty of empirical evidence out there to back this up, so no argument there.

Three caveats spring to mind about how this focus needs to be balanced with other (sometimes apparently contradictory) attributes to succeed.

Firstly, a single-minded focus on the outcome (winning gold) may impede the process (gold standard performance). You only need to look at the England football team record in major tournament penalty shootouts to see the evidence. One of the England players involved in the last shoot-out in Germany in 2006 revealed that he could sense some of his teammates demonstrating what you might interpret to be Hardy's Catastrophe Point: cognitive images of negative newspaper headlines in their mind combined with high somatic activation. Of course they missed their penalties as they were too focused on the outcome and not on the process. Relaxing and focusing on executing your gameplan in the midst of high pressure is vital to peak performance, both from a mental and a physical (effective motor recruitment) perspective.

Secondly, while there's no doubt (see Hardy, 1997) that elite athletes thrive in an intense, competitive environment, there still needs to be an element of individual support, intrinsic reward and a sense of perspective. Kelly Holmes went for 10 years through major games (Commonwealths excluded) before striking gold in Athens. She almost didn't make it to Athens due to clinical depression, self harm and suicidal thoughts. While ultimately she was successful, what would have happened to her if she had had one more injury in the run up to the Athens games? It's sometimes easy to forget about the person and only focus on the athlete.

Finally, goal setting theory would say that to reach the ultimate goal, lots of progress goals need to be met along the way. For an athlete on a path to a higher goal, one of these steps may be a time that gets you into the final of a major competition. Competing at this level and experiencing the new surroundings that come with it may be an important step to achieving the bigger goal, that I wouldn't wish to discourage in an athlete.