A Look At What Leads to Olympic Gold
“It’s all about the journey, not the outcome.”
Carl Lewis, gold medalist in 1996, 1992, 1988
There will be no journey for me as I wont be cheering in rio this summer
Let me tell you that this will not prevent me from passionately diving into a sport orgy which should keep my head full of images and emotions until the next Olympics in Tokyo.
They say sport trains your body , I say, that watching sport trains your mind.
by “ showing what is possible to achieve when you put your mind to it”.
This is by this quote that Lord Coe ended the Olympics 2012. Ever since, i kept on wondering how the mind plays in the elusive chemistry behind the making of a gold medal.
The Olympics is not just another competition. Happening every 4 years, winning gold implies being:
The best of the field, the best of the self, and possibly the best against the past and remain so in the future.
Featuring the bests, the Olympic games have become a cornerstone of global culture essentially because they echo to our deep selves and fundamental principles:
- The willingness and curiosity to explore, new territories, new ways and possibly new records
- The ability to agree on elusive and irrational ideas: Somebody described football as a game that 11 players can play without any line on the ground nor goals and still agree that the ball is off or on the field.
Sports makes us accept the fundamental randomness of what Heidegger calls being and makes us settle on ideas rather than reality. Two swimming or rowing lanes are not comparable, some will be better than other but yet, they host competition for same medals. Similarly Bolt and Carl Lewis did not run with the same shoes.
We are the results of an inextinguishable drive to cooperate and because of that we conceptualise realities which are different.
Olympics displays the fiercest competition you can imagine. I think one neds to be an Olympian to appraise the sheer amount of pain and effort that are present at every single competition and round. World Records are often broken during the heats.
Despite the intensity of the competition, Olympians would most generally congratulate each other at the end of the race, huging and crying together as if they were be amnesic to the fact that have just displayed their most ruthless self.
So how does one becomes the best?
Time
In the long run, we are all dead — John Maynrd Keynes
Time puts a constraint on a very complex equation, balancing, training and recovery while constantly having this 4 year target in sight.
Then, during the Olympic year, the athlete has to peak twice, for qualifying for the event and during the Olympics itself.
A constant, however, is that the body, will, with the passing of time, go towards decay.
Strategies are abundant and highly dependents on the person and discpline, they are sometimes conscious or unconscious deicions that the athlete would take in order to reach peak performance.
Selected examples prior to the Olympics:
Phelps took a 3years swimming retirement.
Bolt has not run much in 2016.
Katina Honshu, was underwater, perhaps, 90% of the last years having broken records on her number of meeting participation.
Time is a very elusive component which involves a lot of randomness, the best way, is in my view, to put your mind and body in the best place to win a gold medal.
Mind
In order to raise the arms on the podium, you need to overcome another powerful enemy. The Self.
The truth is that Athletes, like all humans are subjects to the same questioning and doubting, However they don’t have the luxury to ignore or bury them, as they are constantly judged against numbers.
Being an Olympian means you are already a bunch of victories under your belt.
The key to success in my view is to understand the state of mind behind all those victories.
Sport is magnificent in the sense that it reveals the profound self, who and what you are.
Most non-athletes can easily go for a life time without having a clue about who and what they are. If their mood drops, they can easily ignore and forget it thinking that it is just a bad day.
As an athlete, not finding the why is running the risk that this happen at d-day.
More, great athletes are often if not always surrounded by great coaches who can achieve deep (if not greater understanding)of the triggers that drive their protegee’s performance.
A very first one is Defense. This is the old debate between home and away game. There is a powerful connection between home soil and performance which , comes from an natural instinct of defense of its own territory.
Favorite Examples: France 98. London 2012
The defense trigger can also applies to the defense of a jersey and defending his right to wear it. The Tour de France just wrapped up and its history is rife of contenders being transcended by wearing the yellow jersey.
Predation; Perceiving the other as weaker, seeing “his blood” reveals a deep seated predation instinct and as such can give you immense confidence, because you perceive the other as weaker that it then becomes a natural right to win.
Ian Thorpe, said once on the hair that a swimmer should never collapse on the finish lane, because this is the last picture his competitors will remember of him
However, far my favorite example comes from Sir Alex Ferguson in person. I let you enjoy the story: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sir-alex-ferguson-predicted-manchester-10202109
Sensory experience can go a long way into providing immense joy. No need to draw you a picture of that. It is also no secret that most athletes derives (may be not always) immense sensory pleasure from practicing their sports. Some sportsmen go a long way into talking about their sensations and hunting for sensations may drive some of the greatest like his highness Alberto Contador and his unending list of interview where he would detail how his lungs, arms, heart feels.
For the name of Love. Love, is the ultimate feeling and as such can drive to the ultimate effort. History has witnessed many of the finest sportsmen having their career fueled by the rosy fuel of love in the person of their coach becoming their their loved one.
Favorite Example: Jannie Longo 59 Times French Champion in cycling whose coach is her husband
The Killer Instinct: The Killer Instinct is at the core of sport, I actually think that sport is just a natural peaceful extension of that. The killer instinct is about establish domination and eliminating the rivals without necessarily having a danger orneed for that. In the same way, lions eliminante rivals and their progeny, being a killer is about hitting the table loud and say establish that you are the “man” even if it’s a funeral.
Favorite Example: Arjen Robben, lethal stricker from the Netherland. He does not pass the ball!
The world of football abund of another species, because making a 11 players squad cannot entirely be made of killers. As such, next to the killers are associated team players. These are individuals who will to be willing to sacrifice, produce the most superlative effort for the benefit of the team.
The most beautiful example in my view is in Fabien Gilot whom i truly rejoice to see again in Rio. He is the guy who rotinely swims faster in relay than in individuals. On his forarms he bears a tattoo that “he is nothing without the others”.
As humans, we tend to be sometimes led by curiosity. The thirst to discover something new. Katinka Hosszu — the Iron Lady — post London 2012 embarked in a very special journey and changed her vision of swimming drastically. Her plan is to swim as much as she could, she justifies that by saying that she wants to find out the limit, the limit beyond which she will break.
Survival: It is no secret that being back to the wall can trigger the survival instinct. Conducing to some of the most dramatic performance. There are an Unending list of examples, Tennis is one of my favortie with top players constantly able to save match points and win the game.
My favorite recent example is however in the NBA Finals 2016 which will for sure remain in Basket history books. It witnessed the Cleavland Cavalier sealing victory in the NBA finals 2016 after having lost the initial 3 games.
As Mourinho puts it, managing a squad implies being friend with the players and also, just one second, their enemy.
Emulation: It is one very powerful trigger and my personal favorite. As they say in judo, you don’t fight an opponent you fight the image you have made of the opponent and as such believing that you are weaker than the opponent is a sure way of losing. However, wanting to be on the same level if not greater than your opponent can lead some underdogs to some serious feast. The beauty in emulation is that it is peaceful and often involves the utmost respect.
This is what takes place when the old generation gives way to the new one, often having their elders as role models.
Favorite Example: 200m Butterfly Chad Leclos dramatic winning over Michael Phelps. Mike Powell and Carl Lewis beating back to back world records in 1991. The records still stand to this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2fFZ8TSaTU
Willingness to leave a trace in history. This is a really double edged sword and a very tall order.
Serena Williams knows something about it after having failed twice to equal Stephi Graph’s Record, crashing badly in Australia and France to opponents that she has had dominated in the past.
Phelps, on the other hand seems to have played it totally right, because he wants to leave a place in history, has done what everybody thought was unthinkable, win 8 gold medal in one Olympiad. And because he thinks he is not done writing his book, is making his coming back in Rio.
Likewise, Chris Hoy, Tony Estanguet, Ben Ainslie,etc…because they were convinced had a legacy to leave, have won against all odds back to back Olympic Medals to leave an even more profound trace in history.
Ideas: The best for the end. Believing and defending ideas has been the driver behind way too many wars. Sport in that sense is a much safer environment to defend ideas.
A basic example is in believing the idea that you are the best.
I particularly enjoy so-called any underdog who win simply becauzse they believed, until the very last minute, that they were the best and entitled to win.
Favorite Example: Ye Shiwen in London 2012. I truly enjoyed the victory and world record of the then 16 years old Chinese Swimmer. In fact it still very much echoes in my mind until this day. Ye Shiwen came back from the back of the race to win the race and set a world record against all odds.
She believed the impossible and just made it happen. And that is the most powerful weapon.
