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62. The Value of a Medal – Part 2

September 7, 2010 by duffgibson

Sport is about the challenge.  My all-time favorite quote in terms of creating a mindset for me in my athletic career was from iconic Olympic rower, Marnie McBean:

“My impression of Olympic gold medalists plummeted when I won one myself.”

The point is that Marnie, before she won her first gold, assumed that it was some kind of super-human feat or that the winner had some kind of incredible talent or knowledge that everyone else didn’t.  Essentially, the experience proved to her that the assumption was incorrect.  Certainly a number of factors have to align, and for me luck played a significant role at many times in my journey, but it’s not impossible and it’s certainly not super-human.  To quote Marnie again, it’s just “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

The whole experience has left me with the realization that the people most worth our admiration may or may not be champions at what they do.  One of the premises of this blog is the fact that positive attitudes and certain values contribute to success in sport (and in life for that matter) but obviously there are many athletes (and people) for whom I have a great deal of respect who have never won an Olympic medal.

“We are too much in awe of people who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.” Malcolm Gladwell

Max Thompson was a nordic combined skier for Canada at the Torino Games and like me was staying in the Olympic village in Sestriere.  I had seen Max around the athlete’s lounge watching other athletes compete but the first time I ever had a conversation with him was in the dining hall a few days after my race.  I was sitting with my teammate Paul Boehme and the Australian skeleton coach, a retired American slider by the name of Terry Holland, as well as a few hundred other athletes and coaches from numerous countries.  Max walked over to us, put his hand up to give me a high five and said “Hey man, I just saw your bio.  Fire fighter, gold medal, senior citizen, all right!”  There was definitely a part of me that thought, am I giving a high five to someone who just called me a senior citizen? But I couldn’t help but immediately like him.  Think about what kind of 21 year-old you’d have to walk up to a complete stranger in front of his friends and say that!

Several days later, on the night of the closing ceremonies, I ran into Max again and at the time he was looking for someone.  He mentioned that he had to find a nordic combined official from another country to give her his Olympic team jacket.  Surprised that someone in his position would be trying to give away such a prized possession, I asked him why and he said that he had been relying on this person for the past season to transport his ski jumping skis from competition to competition because he couldn’t afford the extra baggage charges.  He wanted to show his gratitude.

That was a bit of an eye-opener for me in that we often complain about the fact that there are countries in the world that fund sport to a larger extent than Canada.  Perhaps I’m biased but I strongly believe that we’d be better off as a nation if we did invest more in sport.  There was a campaign recently asking that the federal government increase the budget for sport to just 1% of the budget for health care.  To my way of thinking, sport is an extremely effective method of preventative health care – we support sport, our athletes succeed, more and more kids are inspired to participate and follow in their footsteps and we as a nation become healthier.

I’ve certainly complained about a lack of funding more than once but in reality, at least in Torino, I was in a position of not being able to think of anything that I wish I had but couldn’t afford that would have made my preparation better for the Games.  And in contrast here was a guy who was a member of the same Olympic team as I, who was a skier who couldn’t afford to travel with skis!  If my skeleton career had been like that, I don’t know that I would have stuck with it long enough to succeed at a World level.  Because of that, I admire Max and what he’s had to endure and the type of character he obviously has to have made it to the level he did.  Would I admire him more if he had won an Olympic medal?  I don’t think so.

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61. Patrick Anderson – Wheelchair Basketball

August 30, 2010 by duffgibson

I met a guy by the name of Brad Bowden at the Canadian Sport Awards in 2007.  People might know him as a member of the Canadian sledge hockey team but at the time he was there representing the 2006 Paralympic Champion sledge hockey team and the World Champion wheelchair basketball team, both of whom were nominated for male team of the year.  My initial thought was that it must be some kind of first for an athlete to be a Paralympic Champion in one sport and a World Champion in another concurrently.  It also occurred to me what a shame it was that so few people would be aware of this accomplishment.

Brad introduced my wife and I to Patrick Anderson in a very matter-of-fact way as “the best wheelchair basketball player in the world.”  I reacted to that comment as you might expect.  I was certainly impressed but really had no concept of what that meant until the next day at the “celebrity” wheelchair basketball game.  Our team was made up of members of the local media, a few sports administrators and myself.  We were up against Brad and Patrick as well as two members of the women’s national team, Chantal Benoit and Lisa Franks, rounded out with a few members of the Manitoba Provincial team.

Brad introduced my wife and I to Patrick Anderson in a very matter-of-fact way as “the best wheelchair basketball player in the world.”

Myself, I’ve seen wheelchair basketball before and I knew that in recent years Canada has really dominated at the world level so I wasn’t expecting to score a lot of points or even see the ball quite frankly.  The game started pretty much as I expected it to with the national team members showing everyone how the game is played followed by a merciful re-division of the teams.  What struck me very profoundly that day was we were there with someone doing what they were born to do.  In all sincerity, and in the truest sense of the word, Patrick Anderson was an awesome player and it hit me again how Brad had introduced Patrick the night before as “the best wheelchair basketball player in the world.”

It would be impossible for me to describe how absolutely dominating a player Patrick was but I will say a few things.  The speed at which he moved around the court honestly made me wonder if I was doing something wrong.  On more than one occasion he swung around another competitive player from behind and simply took the ball from them.  He did this to me as well and I’ll tell you, it makes you feel like you’re about 6 years old.  You didn’t really have any chance of doing the same thing to him because even if you could catch him, he would palm the ball and hold it on the opposite side of his chair from you.  He passed behind his back accurately without any apparent effort and what I found most striking was when he would literally bounce his chair over a foot in distance to the left or right to get a rebound or a loose ball.  Essentially he could jump in his wheelchair.

Over time I’ve thought a lot about that experience and I still can’t quite put it into perspective.  I’ve always been someone who picks up sports really quickly.  I’ve been on provincial and national teams for several different sports, I’ve known and trained along side many different world leading athletes and I’ve gone to two Olympics myself and I’ve quite honestly never seen anything like it.  For this reason I refer to Patrick as the best athlete I’ve ever met.  I finally had the chance to interview Patrick earlier this summer and todays post is the first of three parts about him and his sport.

Thanks very much Patrick for your time and sharing your thoughts and experiences for Sport At Its Best.

Patrick Anderson - Wheelchair Basketball

Patrick Anderson - Wheelchair Basketball

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60. Beckie Scott, Part 2

August 24, 2010 by duffgibson

This is part two of a series of four short videos of Beckie Scott, Olympic champion cross-country skier.  In this segment Beckie talks about how she felt knowing there was a significant issue in her sport with doping and how she chose to deal with it and ultimately overcome it.  If you have any comments on the post, we’d love to hear them.  Enjoy the video.

Beckie July-10

Beckie July-10

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Posted in Sportsmanship | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

59. Book Review: The Dynamic Path

August 17, 2010 by duffgibson

Today’s post is a video blog in which I talk about a book I have read recently called The Dynamic Path by James Citrin.  If you have any questions or comments we’d love to hear them.

Review-The Dynamic Path

Review-The Dynamic Path

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Posted in Being Your Best | Tagged , | 6 Comments »

58. Kyle Shewfelt, Part 1

August 9, 2010 by duffgibson

If you’re going to have a discussion about success, about being your best or about being the World’s best, as Kyle Shewfelt was in the sport of gymnastics, you need to talk about passion or a love for what it is you’re doing.  You can talk about hard work and many will refer to the ‘rule of 10000 hours’ but you’re never going to get there if you aren’t just a little bit obsessed with what it is you’re doing.

Kyle was kind enough to sit down with me earlier this year to talk about his passion for gymnastics and how he basically lived and breathed the sport since he was very young.  There are a number of very key concepts exhibited  in what Kyle says in this portion of the interview and I think you’d find that a number of great athletes and a number of very successful people exhibit these same traits.  Thanks very much Kyle for your time and insight.

Kyle 2

Kyle 2

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57. Beckie Scott, Part 1

August 3, 2010 by duffgibson

Beckie Scott, Olympic champion cross-country skier, was kind enough to sit down with me last week and have a talk about several subjects relating to sport and specifically to her career in cross-country skiing.  I’ve broken down the conversation into four short videos, all of which we’ll be showing on Sport At Its Best at some point in the future.

Today’s video is about the culture of cross-country skiing and how values and sportsmanship play a significant role.  I asked Beckie about the incident four years ago at the Torino Games in which Beckie and her teammate Sarah Renner were competing in the relay event when Sarah broke a pole.  The Norwegian coach who happened to be standing right there, handed Sarah a pole and the team went on to win the silver medal.  What makes the gesture all the more impressive is the fact that the Norwegian team subsequently finished 4th in the race.

In the second part of the video Beckie talks about Brian McKeever, someone that I’ve heard Beckie refer to as an “inspiration” and someone that I have blogged about previously (http://wp.me/pHILB-4O).  Enjoy!

Beckie - Culture of Cross-country

Beckie - Culture of Cross-country

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56. Self-Awareness, Part 2

July 29, 2010 by duffgibson

As with many sports, in skeleton we spend as much as two hours a day watching video in addition to all the other things one has to do in terms of preparation and training (not to mention eating and sleeping).  It’s easy to think to yourself, “hey I’ve done two hours of homework here, my preparation is done.”  The concern is that the athletes take a run down the track, watch a video from an external perspective and think of how they’ll then make the video better the next time rather than the skill itself.  In other words you need to translate the video to an internal perspective.  You need to imagine what it looks and feels like as if you were actually doing it.

I realize this may sound a bit specific to skeleton but I believe the same concept applies to all sports (and dance – refer to comments from part 1 of this article).  The concern is, with so much video analysis (an external perspective), the athletes will fall short in terms of putting it back into an internal perspective and obviously this is the only vantage point from which an athlete can perform a skill.

An athlete’s success or failure with regard to a technical skill, is based to some extent on sight but in skeleton when you have five G’s preventing you from looking where you need to go, feel for the ice and body-awareness become even more critical.  It can also be more subtle than that.  For example, does the sled skid underneath you almost unnoticeably as you enter or exit a corner?  In the highest G-force situations is the sled turning and therefore grinding the ice underneath it or is the sled going parallel through the pressure?  Can you feel the pressure drop a very slight amount in the middle of a corner thereby telling you exactly where you are and making it possible to time the exit perfectly?  These are all questions that the best will be able to answer because they’re aware of what they’re feeling and can react to it as it happens.

The athletes I coach are probably tired of me saying it, but my catch phrase is, “there shouldn’t be anything that a video or a time sheet can tell you that you didn’t already know [by feel].”  This is admittedly an exaggeration, and I would never insinuate that video analysis is not a very valuable tool – it truly is.  But it has to be used in the context of gaining a better internal understanding of what’s going on in the performing of a skill as it happens.

With respect to other sports the same physical rules apply.  It may seem like a fine point but athletes need to feel why a change in hip angle leads to an increased efficiency in a skating stride – it’s not for the purpose of making the video look better.  Sprinters spend a lot of time looking at the angle of the torso because it affects the range of motion and therefore the strength of certain muscles integral to generating speed, not the least of which are the hip flexors.  If an athlete simply arches the back to change the angle of the torso it misses the mark, but to an untrained eye the issue may appear to be solved on video.

I’ve actually come across a few examples recently of what I would call poor self-awareness in very elite athletes; a swimmer who couldn’t say whether he was breathing in or out or holding his breath when waiting for the gun to go off; a skeleton athlete that didn’t realize that by doing certain nervous system priming drills within two minutes of a sprint could actually knock up to five hundredths of a second off a 30 meter time.  It becomes really difficult to replicate great performances if you don’t know exactly how they happened.

“There shouldn’t be anything that a video or a time sheet can tell you that you didn’t already know [by feel].”

There are occasionally athletes that have poor self-awareness who are still successful because they have a coach that is so in tune with them that they are able to make all the correct decisions on the athlete’s behalf.  The athlete does exactly what they’re told, when they’re told, and essentially the awareness becomes the coach’s role.  This can work but the chances of success are decreased.  Certainly over years of working together, a coach is going to develop a really good understanding of an athlete’s idiosyncrasies and what they need from them and when, but ideally a coach’s input will only ever be supporting what the athlete already knows for themselves.  Olympic champions like Beckie Scott and Catriona LeMay-Doan have both been referred to as athletes who were extremely self-aware.

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55. Self-Awareness, Part 1.

July 27, 2010 by duffgibson

The underlying message of this blog is this: athletes with perspective, who see the big picture, believe in sportsmanship and fair play, etc., are also more likely to be successful athletes and successful people as well.  One of the ways in which I believe this to be true is through heightened awareness of both themselves and the people around them and this is the topic of this week’s entry.

To refresh your memory, here’s what Cal Botterill and Tom Patrick said about people with perspective in their book Perspective, The Key To Life,

“People with perspective are usually great at teamwork.  Their ability to see the big picture helps them recognize and appreciate the value of collaboration and working with others.  Their sensitivity and perceptiveness help them realize that everybody has a role that is important and needs to be appreciated.  Most of all, people with perspective have enough vision, gratitude and security to be open to positive rivalries and other people’s needs.”

Notice all the words that relate to awareness here: see, recognize, appreciate, sensitivity, perceptiveness, realize, appreciated, vision, open to.  You could make the generalization that people with good perspective are simply more aware of themselves and the world around them, aware of the bigger picture, aware of the value in sport and competition, and aware of their own values and why they compete in the first place.  I believe that people who have an increased level of awareness not only have better perspective and are better team players as Cal and Tom suggest, but are more successful as well.

One of the ways in which this happens of course is that people who are more aware and are better team players just make their lives easier by valuing their competitors and not looking at them as “the enemy”.  Imagine the stress you would put yourself under by considering everyone around you as the enemy when ultimately you are in a battle with yourself to achieve your best.  Relationships with competitors (and in individual sports we’re also talking about team mates) become a lot less stressed and clearly at an Olympic level a huge part of success lies in one’s ability to deal with stress.

People who have an increased level of awareness not only have better perspective and are better team players as Cal and Tom suggest, but are more successful as well.

Another way in which people who are more aware succeed is through self-awareness.  What is self-awareness and what makes it so important?  I tend to think of it in three sub-categories, 1) technical self-awareness in the performance of a skill, 2) awareness of one’s health or injury status and 3) awareness of one’s reaction to stress or pressure.  Perhaps there are more sub-categories but I believe these three to be key.

For the sake of this discussion I’ll go into a bit more detail with the first sub-category.  Technical self-awareness in the performance of a skill is fundamental – this is the performance of your sport or an aspect of your sport.  Put very simply, to improve, you need to know exactly what you did and what it felt like internally to perform that specific skill – you need this information to perform the skill again and to make corrections.

Recently at a pre-season training camp in Whistler, some of the other skeleton coaches and I had a discussion about a potential concern.  The concern was that with so much external technical (video) analysis going on in multiple locations, every run, run after run, there exists the possibility that the athletes would lose the critical link between what a run looks like on video versus what it feels like to actually do.

Part 2 to be posted Thursday…

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54. The Value of a Medal

July 19, 2010 by duffgibson

“You know, winning a world title is not that important in life.”

Kelly Slater, 9 Time World Champion Surfer

Lauryn Williams, an American sprinter, finished 2nd in the 100 meters at the Athens Olympics in 2004.  She followed that up with a gold in the same event at the World Championships the following year and a silver medal in 2007.  As one could imagine, expectations were high going into the Beijing Olympics in the summer of ‘08 but as fate would have it, Lauryn finished 4th.

First, I should point out that it’s almost universally agreed upon amongst athletes that 4th is the worst place to finish in any major competition – to be the top finishing competitor not to win a medal is a tough spot to be in.  It’s almost better to do worse so as not to have to play back all of the mistakes that could have made what is often a tiny difference between winning a medal and not.

I saw an interview with the sprinter last summer and in it she described the funk she was in after the race.  I don’t remember the interview well enough to quote her word for word but the point was essentially this: she was reliving the race and wallowing in the result over and over again for a long period of time…  and then her father died.

It was really powerful to hear her describe how immediately the race became nothing more than an 11 second segment of her life.  “It’s just 11 seconds.”

It was an extremely harsh reminder of the role sport plays in our world.  It’s exciting, it’s challenging, huge amounts of time, money, blood, sweat and tears are invested and yet at the end of the day – it is just sport.  Ultimately, I believe people at both ends of the spectrum come to the same realization.  Those who fail to meet their expectations, as high as they may be like Lauryn Williams in Beijing, suffer a terrible heartbreak but ultimately realize it’s just sport and life goes on.

Perhaps what’s less obvious is that those who are lucky enough to achieve their dream performance also reach the same conclusion.  Whether an Olympic medal actually translates into fame and fortune or does not (and in the vast majority of cases it does not), you quickly realize that you’re no different.  The things that were really important to you in your life prior to the achievement are still the same things after.

“It’s just 11 seconds.”

And for me here’s the crux of the argument – because it is just sport, ultimately the result is less important than how you make it happen.  Whatever it takes to make your dream a reality, do it in a manner in which you can be proud of.  Do you think Lauren Williams’ Dad is proud of her even though she finished 4th in Beijing?  Yes!  Maybe the race didn’t go exactly how she hoped it would but if she gave it her best shot – that in itself is more significant than a result, especially in an event as highly contested as the 100 meters.

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53. Jungle Jim Hunter

July 12, 2010 by duffgibson

Jungle Jim Hunter was one of the original Crazy Canucks as a member of the Canadian alpine ski team in the early to mid seventies.  These days, besides being both a coach and mentor of young athletes he has a radio talk show that airs in Calgary every Saturday that you can also get on the station’s website at any time (http://www.fan960.com/).  It’s one of the very few programs that focuses on amateur sport and how to become both a better athlete and person and I’ve always found it to be very interesting and very valuable.

A few months ago now, Jim invited me on to the program to talk about skeleton and to discuss the upcoming Olympics that were only a few weeks away at the time.  We talked about a variety of topics, one of which was earning your performances.  Jim made the observation that too many young athletes these days “want to win by default.”  What he meant by that was there is a difference between deserving to win and winning because the competition had a bad day or was unlucky or perhaps had inferior conditions or equipment to work with.

Of course these factors are often beyond our control but the point is that the level of competition contributes to the level of satisfaction.  Very seasoned and very successful athletes often appreciate this relationship and want their competitors to be at their best to make it more meaningful and more satisfying should they prevail (2. Emulating Gregor Staehli).  Jim’s point was that too many young athletes don’t yet appreciate this relationship and would feel happy to win, even in the absence of the top competitors, hence the expression, “winning by default.”

Jungle Jim Hunter - Old School

Jungle Jim Hunter - Old School

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To illustrate the other end of the spectrum, and what he feels athletes should aspire to, he told a story from when he was a teenager and just beginning his international career as a skier.  Because he wanted to be the best, he sought out the best to learn from and at the time that meant such iconic skiers as Franz Klammer, Jean-Claude Killy and Ingemar Stenmark to name a few.  

The next part was what I found particularly extraordinary and at the time I asked him to clarify more than once.  What he did was actually go to their home towns in the off season, and literally show up at their front door unannounced.  I asked him what he would say as some unknown teenager on the front door step of one of these giants of his sport.  He told me he would explain who he was and that he wanted to be a great skier and he asked them if he could interview them and try to learn from them what it takes.

Now apparently he did this on a number of occasions with many of the top skiers of his generation and incredibly he was welcomed in and given valuable information in almost every case.  I made him stick around after the radio program for a good 45 minutes so he could tell me more stories about these incredible unannounced visits.  The one that sums up his point the best, at least in my opinion, was when he came to knock on Ingemar Stenmark’s door.  I gather the man himself answered and after hearing Jim’s explanation as to why he was there, he asked him if he had his workout clothing with him.  After indicating that he did, he was told to come around back for a workout they were just beginning.

Jim was able to participate in the session and learned several training techniques the great Swedish champion was utilizing including intervals riding unicycles of various lengths uphill through pylons to build both strength and coordination at the same time.  At the end of the training, Jim asked Stenmark very simply, “why did you help me?”  His answer, which offers great insight into the way a champion of his stature thinks and is the antithesis of ‘winning by default’, was this:

“I want you to be your best so that if I win I can say I was the best.”

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