I’ll give you my take; I feel I represent the VAST majority of highly dedicated, yet not quite decorated, athletes.
I swam competitively, year round (never swam summer league, it didn’t exist in Louisiana in the early 90s) for 18 years. I sacrificed a hell of a lot. All four years of high school, I had morning practice at 5:15 M-F, afternoon practice from 3:15-7 M-F, and Saturday morning practice 6-11. 50 weeks out of the year. When I got to college, the work load was capped by NCAA rules, so I only had three mornings per week, five afternoons, and a Saturday morning. Every week. The longest break from swimming I took from 1991 (when I was three) to 2010 was 3 weeks. My only friends in high school were swimmers; I never got to stay after school for anything, ever; I never got to join all the fancy/time wasting clubs at school; every time I tried to have friends outside of swimming, they would stop inviting me to hang out because I was always saying ‘sorry, I have practice.’ I think you get the point.
Why did I do it? I knew pretty early on that I was nothing special. With all that work, I finished high school as a (LCM) 57.9/2:08 100/200m flier; 57.1/2:01 100/200 freestyler. I got a walk on spot at an out of state D-1 school (swim teams are 30+ people, but only 9.9 scholarships), so I had to go out of state if I wanted to swim. I didn’t want to sacrifice academics, so I added a year to my school. Again, doing all of this because I wanted to keep swimming. After four years of that, I called it quits. There’s nothing past college unless you’re olympic level, and even then, it pays shit; unless you’re Phelps/Lochte, you still have to coach somewhere to be about $50k a year (relatively speaking, it’s not “shit”, but relative to other sports, it’s missing a few zeros). Or there’s masters swimming, but that’s not as competitive. And so I finished up as a 24.4/52.9/1:57 50/100/200 freestyler. Looking back it’s all just fun facts, whether you went this time, or qualified for that meet. But I don’t regret a single minute of it.
What I loved about it is that I got to be the best I could ever be at something. I couldn’t care less if someone else made the olympics. I knew pretty early on I was never going to do it, but that didn’t make it any less fulfilling to work hard. You could imagine my “olympics” would be a high school regional meet, or college conference meet, etc. People who are SUPER talented can easily win these meets, but to feel fulfilled, they would need to win the olympics. I’m fully aware of how fast I am, and I don’t feel any less fulfilled just because I never qualified for olympic trials even. But every time I trained for a 9 months, being completely exhausted 24/7, only to taper down and drop .25 seconds in a 100 free, it instantly made everything worth it for me. That’s all I needed. Obviously making the olympics would be awesome, but not everybody needs it.
One of the best parts is that it keeps paying off. Not only are people continually impressed that I was able to swim more than like 4 times per week, let alone have 100% attendence for five straight years at one point (somewhere around 2500 straight practices without missing ONE workout), but I realize that alot of things that other people don’t want to do just don’t phase me (like 100+ mile bike rides, alone, on a straight, flat highway when it’s 100 degrees out). Plus it’s awesome now that I do triathlons because I can focus on running and biking, maybe swim twice a week, and still be first out of the water. But yea, it’s not all about the olympics, or being better than an artibrary person; for some people it might be, but they’re unreasonable and in it for the wrong reasons, imo.
There’s no one that has a “stupid” goal for wanting to sacrifice everything for it. There are some people who are just never going to Kona qualify, or even finish an Ironman without walking, no matter how hard they work. And it wouldn’t be stupid for them sacrifice everything to get better, but for someone who can Kona qualify, they may look at it and think “why the hell would they try so hard, they’ll never Kona qualify”. To them I say, there are people who Kona qualify in their sleep, and they’ll look at you and say “why would he work so hard, he’s never gonna win Kona”. And to them I say, there are pros who can beat you in their sleep, and they’ll look at you and say “why would he work so hard, he’s never gonna be the best pro triathlete ever”. Each person, knowing their own inherent talent level, has a different end goal. Podium finishing in one of the local tris I did last year (I had a 5 minute lead out of the water) meant nothing to me, but to one of my friends, it was the best day of her life to get a third place AG medal at a local tri. She sacrificed ALOT to get that, and that’s why it meant so much to her. I didn’t, so it was meaningless to me, even though my silver is generally regarded as “better” than her bronze.
So to answer your question,when it comes to sacrificing everything for a payoff, it’s all relative, and I would never draw the line on what I think people, or myself, should do it for. And no, I think it’s really not that different than someone doing it for olympic gold. For example, I’ve put more into swimming than Missy Franklin over the years. And yet, she has 4 gold medals, I have some workout shirts with my college team’s name on them. It’s all relative…