Thankfully, some athletes feel a need to explain.  Even when Christine Nesbitt won a gold medal in the ladies' 1,000-metre last week, she was compelled to describe the flaws in her performance. That's right.  Her performance.

She didn't blame a bureaucrat for nearly missing the top spot. Afterward her father Wayne condoned his daughter's self-criticism, telling me that's how she'll improve for the next race.
 
After his ninth place finish in Saturday's men's 1,500-metre, speedskater Denny Morrison wasn't quite as willing to fall on a sword.  Morrison was the world champion in the distance two years ago.  But an hour after Saturday's race, he insisted he hadn't given up or quit in the last lap, explaining "I just wasn't putting it technically into the ice the way I should have been."

Now, I'm not a 'sports journalist' who's covered a lot of speedskating. But to me it sounded like Morrison was saying it was his fault, without actually saying it.  It was what came next that convinced me.

"And that's something that for whatever reason, I've lost over the past 12 to 15 months.  It's kind of frustrating to be getting closer and closer to the Olympics and know that I'm skating poorer and poorer."
 
So in Morrison's own opinion, it wasn't that his competitors were getting better than him. He was getting worse.

Morrison did suggest that perhaps his training wasn't serving him well. That he was a better skater when he was allowed to train with his friend and rival, American Shani Davis.

As for "Own the Podium" (OTP), Morrison downplayed the advantage it was supposed to have given him.

"The whole OTP and everything like that ...," he said, searching for an explanation, "we've done all kinds of blood testing and making sure my program is putting me physiologically exactly where I should be, to make sure I am the ideal speedskating body and form and physiologically ready, but it's all technical. OTP programs, they're all great. They're awesome. They give you one, or two or five per cent, to give you that little advantage. But technique in speedskating is going to give you 50 per cent. So if I'm doing half of a good job in technique I'm losing 25 per cent."

Now, I know that the $3.8 million that speedskating got from Own the Podium last year, paid for more than blood tests.  But Morrison referred to himself a lot to explain why he didn't reach the podium.

It's a tough thing to admit on a world stage, after working four years for a different result.
 
And I'm glad he had the courage to volunteer the answers. It would have been difficult to ask for them.