EARLY DISCIPLINE

Champions generally have to start training at a young age. That means they often show a natural sense of discipline.

Ellen MacArthur surged to fame when she became the fastest woman and the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the earth in a single-handed race, completing the 2001 Vendée Globe in second place. MacArthur is dedication personified. So strong was her passion for sailing that she made sacrifices to support her activity throughout her childhood.

‘When I was about 14 I was already thinking about trying to save up my money for a small boat that I could live on as well as sail on the coast. My first boat was a little 8-foot dinghy, but you can’t really live on a boat like that and I really fancied the idea of travelling places and having something that you could live on and cruise around in. In fact, I’d been saving up since the age of 8. Saving for a boat was a massive goal, which is why for lunch at school I’d have either nothing, or soup which cost 4 pence from the soup machine, or mashed potato and baked beans which cost a total of 8 pence. I saved everything because we didn’t get pocket money as kids and birthdays and Christmases were quite spaced out, so it was basically about making savings every day.’

Adrian Moorhouse, Olympic gold medallist in the breaststroke in Seoul in1988, showed early dedication in the training regime he adopted as a youngster.

‘I was pretty focused as a kid. I was training seven times a week at the age of 11. I’m a routine person, so if I know where I’ve got to be - the pool at a certain time - I’ll get into the routine. I’m a very habitual person. I’ll be there, I’ll do it and I’ll work hard.’

Sir Chay Blyth’s achievements include becoming the first man to sail around the world against the prevailing winds and currents in 1971, for which he was awarded the CBE. Five years before that he broke the record for rowing across the Atlantic with British Army Captain John Ridgeway, completing the 3000-mile test of endurance in 92 days.

Blyth describes himself as having been ‘a wild young boy’, but he was also one with great capacity for discipline, as his childhood experiences show. That youngster was so inspired by a chance encounter with an Olympic swimmer that he took up swimming and embarked on a demanding training schedule.

‘Through his encouragement I took up swimming and ended up training three times a day. I was 10 or 11. We lived about two and a half miles from the swimming baths and I would get up and run down there at 7 o’clock in the morning and then train, and then go to school, then come back at lunch time, and then go back in the evenings. Training three times a day must have taken quite a lot of determination - to be able to do that at that young age.’

It is just this kind of determination that was to support Blyth during the planning and execution of his epic voyages.

Chris Evert, who won three Wimbledon titles and a total of 18 Grand Slams, certainly trained hard as a youngster. She was drilled by her father to practise shots over and over again, hitting forehands and backhands down every line of the court. These early years contributed hugely to her tennis success as an adult. The training approach was quite different to that used by the young Lloyd brothers, David and John, who weren’t drilled to hit the same shot so repeatedly. John particularly showed huge natural talent, but perhaps didn’t have the absolute discipline required to make it right to the top of the game. David says:

‘John realized that practice would make him good, which he wanted to be. But sometimes he would say, “Ugh, I can’t practise today; it’s too hot.” Or it would be too windy. Therefore he didn’t follow through. Becoming a champion definitely requires a control of your mind, and it’s very important to be able to learn that at a very young age.’

David Lloyd believes that aspiring tennis champions need to understand that what they do on the practice court has direct bearing on how they will do in matches. They learn their matchplay on the practice court. Therefore, coaches look for kids with the ability to practise consistently well, day after day - like Tim Henman did as a youngster. When Lloyd worked with him between the ages of 12 and 16, he never put in a bad day’s practice.

JUGGLING DEMANDS AND MAKING CHOICES

Dr Stephanie Cook, who took the gold medal in the modern pentathlon in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, knows all about discipline. Before becoming a full-time sportswoman she initially maintained her training regime while working as a junior doctor. This was in the days before modern pentathlon was even an Olympic event for women, so she didn’t even have the inspiration of winning one of the sporting world’s glittering prizes to spur her on.

‘If ever I’m doing something I will always try and put 100% into it. It doesn’t have to be sport. I always try to do the best I can. That was a driving factor behind me doing well in the modern pentathlon.

‘I think my determination showed when it involved getting up at 5.30am to go swimming before going to work. As a junior doctor I was running around all day, so was absolutely shattered after work. But then I’d get home, put my kit on, go out for a run or sit in the car and drive for an hour to go fencing, and then come back. You’re absolutely shattered. I did that because I loved it, because I got more out of my life, and I got more out of my job by doing that - but so many people thought I was completely crazy. I didn’t know many other people who would actually do what I did and go to the lengths that I went to at that time.’

Once it seemed likely that the women’s modern pentathlon would be made an Olympic event, Cook finally opted for the easier option of giving up her job to train full-time with the backing of lottery funding: ‘I could sleep properly and eat properly and I wasn’t rushing off to go to work. It was great,’ she says.

Even when champions are established stars in their field, there are no shortcuts in terms of the hours of training required - hours that are often unsociable. Three times Olympic champion Matthew Pinsent starts rowing on the Thames at 7.30 in the morning. Does he ever ask himself why he’s doing it? Yes, he certainly does - most mornings. Training for four years just to win one race - Olympic gold - isn’t easy. He knows it is inevitable that there will be some bad days, as well as the good ones.

His training routine puts him out of step with most people’s daily lives. He may get some time to himself that other people would be spending at work, but the strange hours aren’t easy.

‘Today we finished around 1 o’clock - that’s a lot earlier than anyone else. So I get this afternoon and evening to do whatever I want and then come back tomorrow and do some more. It is a different routine to everyone else in life, which is kind of tough. You lose your weekends too.’

Nevertheless, Pinsent has sufficient reserves of discipline and dedication to keep turning up at the river for more training.

‘Part of it is simply knowing that there are going to be bad days. You just have to accept that there is no one in life who gets out of bed every morning thinking “Yeah, great, hooray”, whatever job they do, however much they love it. But compared to 99% of the population … I love my job more than most.’

Former badminton champion Gill Clark accepted the commitment she made to her sport because she alone had decided this was what she wanted to do with her life. She doesn’t think it appropriate for people to talk about having to make ‘sacrifices’. What top performers do is make ‘choices’. Clark stresses that she chose to concentrate her efforts on developing her sporting career - it was a conscious decision to put other things to the side and make badminton her priority.

This choice wasn’t necessarily an easy one. In Clark’s experience her commitment to competitive badminton at the highest level made it hard to maintain personal relationships.

‘I was forever on the road. It’s not as bad as for tennis players, but you’re on the road. Whilst it’s getting better, it’s still not really accepted that the woman travels and leaves the man at home, and he’s got to do the laundry and cook for himself and all those sort of things. It’s quite all right for a man to do that, to travel on business, but it’s still not really acceptable for a woman. The other thing is, if you’re deeply in love, and I’m flying off to Taipei and Japan and Korea, and I’m going to be away for three and a half weeks, you start missing him. So then, because you have all these negative emotions, it impacts your performance. Therefore, I made the choice that that was all going to have to be put on hold.’

RESOLVE, PIG-HEADEDNESS AND COMMITMENT

Ron Dennis, boss of the McLaren racing team, has had plenty of experience in assessing what it is that makes a top quality Formula One racing driver. The vital ingredient for him is ‘steely resolve’.

‘You can often see if someone has got what it takes. It’s not when discussing with someone whether they should join your team, but when they are under stress and being pushed to succeed that you see their resolve. In our sport there are many drivers who are capable of winning races and world championships in the best car, but you rarely have a situation where the car is the best all the time. It’s how the driver finds it in himself to make up for the performance deficiencies of the car. It comes from their resolve and if they want to succeed.’

David Lloyd certainly has great belief in the power of determination, which he applies in his business life. He likens the challenges you meet in sport and general life to an enormous wall. If there isn’t an easy way through, you have to continue to find a way to get past the wall - even if it means making a compromise.

‘Walls will come down all the time in everything you do - bloody high walls. When one does, you’ve got to get over it. If you can climb it, terrific; if you can’t climb it, walk around it. You might have to compromise to get around the other side, but if you don’t get around the side, you’re dead anyway. You may have to compromise in tennis in the way you’re hitting the ball; in business you may have to compromise on giving away a little bit more of the deal. But you’ve got to get around the other side of that wall.’

Sebastian Coe’s talent and dedication took him to the top of the athletic world, twice winning the Olympic 1500 metres. He also once held the 800 metres, 1000 metres, 1500 metres and one-mile records simultaneously. Coe’s success depended in part on his amazing natural talent, but he couldn’t have achieved such sporting heights without a lot of hard work and commitment.

‘Without getting boring and scientific about it, I do have a very low heart rate; I have a very large oxygen ability for oxygen uptake … I have a light frame and I always ran in balance. That was the luck of the draw. I don’t think that in itself would have been enough to get me beyond being a useful national standard competitor. The difference between that and getting onto a rostrum for major championships is 80 miles a week, ten to twelve hours in the gym and all the other things that go with it.

‘There are plenty of athletes I have worked with - and you can see them from relatively young ages - who have precocious talent but fall through the net. Sometimes that’s because they just are not prepared mentally to commit to it. If they are not prepared to do that then they will be much happier going off to do something else. There is nothing worse than seeing people in sport at 14, 15 and 16 being pushed into something that really doesn’t interest them and they don’t want to commit to it.’

England fly-half Jonny Wilkinson derives confidence and belief from the work he puts in practising kicks. The training gives him greater confidence when preparing for a difficult kick, or one with the potential to win the game. He believes he ‘deserves’ success because of all the hard work he has put in when training; his dedication gives him the right to succeed. He knows that natural talent can count for a great deal of a player’s achievements, but the harder an individual works, the better he will get. Certainly, the ability to put in a consistently good performance, rather than just a one-off stunt, relies on dedicated practice. Top athletes have to make a personal investment in time and effort if they want to improve their chances of being successful when the pressure is on.

Wilkinson had this realization that training hard is the best route to consistency when he was 16.

‘Some days I was great and some days I was terrible. I went to see the team coach and I realized that it wasn’t about having a gift, about having good and bad days that you weren’t in control of. There was something you could do to improve your chances of getting the ball over. If you practised hard and did the right things, you could have good days every day. Now I won’t ever go into a situation where I’m not prepared. Any kick I miss, I can explain everything about why I missed.’

Determination to win against an aggressive opposition is the mark of a top quality rugby team. England captain Lawrence Dallaglio recalls the battle between England and France in 2000, when the England squad were playing away from home in Paris.

‘We had a number of opportunities in that game to give ourselves a comfortable lead, but we didn’t take them. As a result, there was always going to come a time when the French were going to come back at us - and they did. It ended up being real “backs-to-the-wall” stuff, but the character of the England players came through.

‘The match ended with the French peppering the English line, but it was a line that was firm. There’s a great photo which shows it - a line of Englishmen repelling a French attack and they are all glowering at the French.’

England held on to win 15-9.

For round-the-world yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur, determination is essential if she is to survive the extreme demands she makes of herself. For example, sleep deprivation is the norm. Before competing in the Vendée Globe for the first time, MacArthur sailed her then newly built boat Kingfisher back from New Zealand to the UK. During the trip she analysed her sleep patterns.

‘We studied when I slept naturally when I was at sea 24 hours a day. The weather has an impact, but generally speaking you can sleep when you want to. I learnt when I had the most tendency to sleep and therefore when I benefited most from it. Of course, at the end of the day a lot of your sleep is controlled by the weather and you have to sleep when you can. But the study showed me how much I slept in 24 hours. It’s easy to lose track of that when you’re on the boat. In the single-handed transatlantic race I slept for 4.2 hours in every 24 on average over two weeks.’

For MacArthur, this kind of knowledge was invaluable when trying to pace herself in long, solo races. She believes that being mentally aware of what state you are in is one of the biggest factors in determining success at sea. You simply can’t give 100% for three days and then be exhausted if you are competing in a race lasting seven days. Pacing yourself, forcing yourself to control your energy expenditure, is essential.

SELFISH STREAKS

If you’re dedicated to winning, that may mean you need a degree of selfishness to get you onto the winner’s podium.

Adrian Moorhouse, who fulfilled his dream of winning an Olympic gold medal in the breaststroke in 1988 in Seoul, certainly thinks so. Moorhouse admits that champions have to be so focused on what they are trying to achieve that ‘you’re not necessarily the nicest person to be around’.

‘Being nice didn’t matter when you wanted to win. You would be nice if you knew it would get you to where you wanted to get to, if it would contribute to your performance. They are not things I am proud of in hindsight, but I wasn’t a nasty person. I know I was quite selfish. I mean, my mum has called me selfish. I think it’s different in real life, particularly in business.’

When racing solo Moorhouse didn’t worry about being nice; he made good use of legal gamesmanship. If Moorhouse was ahead of one of his close rivals in a race, he would move over to swim at the side of his lane that was nearest to that rival. It was a move he knew might just give him the edge to win.

It may be that top champions need such dedication and focus on achieving their goals that they simply appear selfish. According to sports psychologist Professor Graham Jones, research shows that motivation, relating to mental toughness, falls into two dimensions. There is the determination to come back after failure, because the individual believes in themselves, but there are also internalized motives to succeed.

Jones says that lots of performers will talk about doing what they do in order to ‘show’ somebody, perhaps an ex-teacher who told them they would never amount to much; but underpinning that desire are really strong, internalized motives - the individual is really doing it for themselves. As Jones says, people don’t train at 5 o’clock in the morning seven days a week just for the recognition they get for winning a gold medal. Something else has to drive the person on - their personal sense of pride and satisfaction. This is why many elite performers can come across as selfish - because they know what they want to do, why they are doing it and they are not going to deviate or be distracted from that.

For some athletes, hurting those they are close to is part of the preparation for competition. Former national athletics coach Frank Dick recalls Daley Thompson’s approach to the build-up:

‘His preparation, eventually, was nothing to do with anyone other than himself. He took it upon himself in the run-in to a major championship to almost exercise his aggression on the people who were closest to him. He really was not easy to live with at those times. He’d worked out that if he could hurt the people who were closest to him, everybody else would be easy to handle in the arena.’

KILLER INSTINCT

Winners seize their opportunities to win. They have an attitude that says ‘take no prisoners’. David Platt, former coach of the England Under-21 squad and former England player, doesn’t think players should have any feeling for the opposition. He can’t understand why someone on a winning team might feel sorry for the losing side. He believes the better players don’t really care. If his team is winning 3-0 at half time, Platt will challenge them to go out and win 6-0. They shouldn’t think the game is over. Nor should they feel sorry for their opponents, but accept that it is the other side’s fault they are losing so badly. Above all, they mustn’t let them off the hook.

When football players don’t give their all or let that killer instinct slip, there is a danger they will underperform. Take the England football team’s apparent ability to raise their game when playing real threats - such as Germany or Argentina - but the tendency to crumble against lesser sides. England coach Sven-Göran Eriksson says:

‘It relates to the mental approach to the game. If you meet Argentina or Germany, you know that the match will be difficult and you must perform at your absolute best. When you meet Macedonia at home, you think it will be okay. So the mental approach to the games is different. But it’s not only England where that happens. I think it happens in football in general.’

Theoretically, a side should have a better record at home than away, emboldened by the familiarity of the ground and the home support. However, as 2002 drew to a close, Eriksson noticed this didn’t seem to be the case with England. Contrary to expectation, England were doing better away than at home. As he said, ‘It’s very strange’.

‘Maybe we think it’s easy at home. When you think things are easy, you are not prepared to kill your opponent, and so you will never have a good result. You must have that killer instinct. The ball is a 50:50 ball and you think, “That’s my ball”.’

For some sporting champions, competitions become almost like real battles. Javelin champion Steve Backley likens champions to ‘warriors’ and the experience of entering a competition to going into battle. Backley doesn’t feel that he is playing a game; he feels that he is ‘fighting for my life’. In major championships he convinces himself that it is a case of ‘live or die’. The event is, in a sense, blown out of all proportion in his emotions.

Backley likens the contest between top javelin throwers to a fight, with each throw a punch landed on the other. This was how he saw his battle for silver in the 2000 Olympics, when Backley was facing stiff competition from Sergei Makarov of Russia.

‘I think he thought he’d beaten me and went to sleep. But I had a response, and went ahead of him. Then he had a chance to respond. In the fight analogy, it was as if I’d just squared him on the chin. It shook him a bit. He threw a reasonable 86m, which made me think he was capable of doing it, but he overcooked it. I caught him on the hop.’

In the end Backley threw 89.85m, a longer distance than Makarov’s best effort, so taking the silver and pushing the Russian into the bronze medal position.

Having considered the discipline, determination and sometimes downright selfish pigheadedness shown by sporting champions, we move on to consider some of the influences that helped to make them what they are.

Chapter 2

I BELIEVE!

ONE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT LEAPS OUT from most champion sportspeople is the depth and strength of their self-belief. That belief not only encourages them to keep training year after year, but helps them come back to form after injury and hold their nerve in the heat of competition.

BELIEF MATTERS

Professor Graham Jones has been researching the qualities of mental toughness that distinguish the truly elite performers from the rest. His studies of athletes have generated a ranking of qualities required for mental toughness. Self-belief has emerged as the top requirement, the most important characteristic of all.

Elite sportspeople from a range of disciplines, including swimming, sprinting, triathlon, golf and rugby, determined that this was the most important characteristic of mental toughness: ‘Having an unshakable self-belief in your ability to achieve your competition goals.’

Belief also appeared in another form, ranked third in importance: ‘Having an unshakable self-belief that you possess unique qualities and abilities that make you better than your opponents.’ Champion athletes need to believe that they are better than the competition.

Whatever sport you look at, belief is essential. Ron Dennis, boss of the McLaren racing team, says: ‘Ego is an essential ingredient in winners.’

In her competitive days, Olympic hurdler Sally Gunnell had a strong bond with top sprinter Linford Christie and hurdler Kriss Akabusi. What common characteristics did they all share?

‘I guess it’s believing in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself when you stand on the line, then you’re not going to go anywhere. We believed in what we’d done, who we were and what we’re made up of. We were all quite selfish people. When people know me I’m not a bitchy character. A lot of people used to say I’m like the girl next door, but I was someone very different as soon as I stepped onto that track.’

Daley Thompson, Olympic gold medallist in the decathlon in 1980 and 1984, had huge self-belief, as former national athletics coach Frank Dick recalls:

‘Just after a hard day’s work, when we were sitting back and feeling the sun on our faces, Daley said to me, “Frankie, who’s the greatest athlete you ever saw?” I asked if he meant even in videos, and he said yes. I named someone who had made four world records in one day. Daley said, “Forget it, buddy, you’re looking at him”.’

DEVELOPING BELIEF

There clearly is no doubt that belief is an essential ingredient of champions, top athletes who can rise to major occasions and pull out medal-winning performances. The question is, where does that belief come from? Is it inherent or can it be developed?

According to sports psychologist, Steve Sylvester, the factors that enable champions to have rock-solid belief, and that therefore enable them to win consistently, are unique to each individual. This unique formula for strong belief is based on the individual’s past experiences and how the person feels about the people around them. Sylvester notes that there are common ingredients that world champions exhibit, and the first one is the ‘never say die’ approach - the ability to work and persist in what they are doing, no matter what. The question he asks is, where does that come from? Is it innate? A lot of the people Sylvester works with persist for a combination of two reasons: because they want to achieve something (their dream), and because they need to achieve it.

For many top athletes, belief develops over time, as the individual meets and surpasses graduated goals. No one can give someone else belief in themselves, it has to be generated by each individual for themselves.

Frank Dick, former national athletics coach, says it is essential to give people the opportunity to build self-belief for themselves. He says:

‘I cannot give you self-belief. This is a bridge that only you have to build and only you can cross. The self-belief comes from believing that you can explore, that you can challenge, that you can win. It’s a growing thing, all the time. You’ve got to have “a guid conceit o’ yersel”.’

Hurdling gold medallist Sally Gunnell built up her confidence and belief little by little.

‘I was OK as a junior, but I wasn’t brilliant. I wasn’t one of these people who went and won junior championships. But I was a confident athlete. If one year I got into a senior international, I gained a lot of confidence from it. Then I would set myself the next goal. I would just build up gradually like that. A lot of people talk about being Olympic champion one day. I was never really like that. I guess the first time I realized I could win the Olympics was about four years before it actually happened - when I was 15 in Seoul in 1988.’

For David Platt, former England player, belief in how high he could rise in the game of football developed gradually. Platt started out with Manchester United.