Sport – Page 2 – Achilles & Aristotle

Average White Male

Shock news from the Harvard Business Review this week: men who are ‘agreeable’ suffer a 20% deficit in earnings versus those who are ‘disagreeable’. Add this to one earlier in the year, where men who are slim also suffer a 20% deficit – and I’m in trouble.

Average height costs me another 15-20%. And entering the jobs market in a recession (1990) means a £200,000 lifelong deficit versus those who entered the labour market in a ‘boom’. Any more ‘deficits’ and I’ll be paying my employer for the privilege of working my nuts off.

My remedy – West Indies cricket of the 1970s and 80s. Master your sense of injustice, focus on what you are great at, forget the conventional wisdom and play to win.

Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Curtly Ambrose were very tall. Malcolm Marshall was average height, but the most feared fast bowler of them all. Viv Richards took whatever blows were necessary, before whacking everything and everyone all around the ground with controlled power and aggression.

Finally Clive Lloyd. He captained in virtual silence – an inclination of the head, a quiet word. Total authority. His loping, slightly stooped walk to the middle, enough to make the whole crowd pause and pay attention.

The Harvard Business Review says if I respect the average, I lose. So like the great West Indians – time to change the rules of average white males.

Life, Psychology, Sport, Work

Why Silver is the worst medal of all

Watching the Olympic 10m diving yesterday, one couldn’t help but be struck by the delight of Tom Daley, in third, versus the desolation of Qiu Bo in second. This morning a friend sent me a good reason for it: counterfactual thinking.

Put simply, Silver looks at Gold and thinks about loss. But Bronze looks at the whole of the rest of the field and delights in making the podium at all. Each sees the most obvious counterfactual outcome – what might have been. Gold for one, nothing at all for the other. Each then frames their assessment of their situation accordingly: Dumb luck vs Result!

It’s a fascinating insight. And one which travels to other domains – notably work. People often obsess about the job they haven’t got, instead of being grateful for the one they have.

Instead of lamenting over the top spot, more of us should revel in making the podium. Bronze is a more precious metal than it looks.

Ethics, Life, Sport, Work

Noble Purpose

The Olympics bring out my mixed feelings about competition. Winning at all costs, grinding someone else in the dust, the distortion of personality that comes with going ‘all out’. Sometimes, in my sporting past, I’ve avoided finishing people off. Sometimes I’ve played hard and unfair.

Doing it the right way matters. And way beyond sport. I was talking to someone about US politics – and indeed UK politics – where what starts as the ‘noble purpose’ of ‘public service’ finishes in the gutter of ‘attack ads’ and ‘sliming’ your opponent. Campaign managers and political advisers inexorably steer toward the end justifying absolutely all means.

Chinese badminton players have been vilified this week for serving into the net to avoid winning. One of my work friends was there in the Olympic hall. And he told me about the crowd’s initial confusion, then realisation, then real anger as boos rang out. Sport betrayed.

But we are inconsistent. Soccer players defend in numbers to kill a game. Blocking an end – and not offering a shot – can be among cricket’s finest achievements. Where are the boundaries of ‘fair’ play? Or is all fair in love, sport and war?

I was talking to someone at work about us doing things the ‘right’ way. She said ‘Isn’t it simply about quality?’ That helped me get it clear in my head – the answer is no. You can easily do something very effective, of very high quality – but very wrong.

I think the answer is the ‘noble purpose’ test – advancing the objective without defeating the object. History doesn’t always record good runners up, but it rarely forgives ‘bad winners’. The killer instinct is fine, so long as the ‘noble purpose’ lives on.

Art, Life, Psychology, Sport

Sport as Life

The thesis: truly great sporting skill and self-expression come best when not too structured, not too investigated, not too explored.

The counter: nearly-great performance is helped by study, stats, practice and heightened professionalism.

Stimulated by a cricket ground conversation with a good friend – and his kindness in buying me Ed Smith’s ‘What sport tells us about life’, I’m pondering the balance of thought and action, impulse and impact, standing up and standing out.

Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ comes from matching high challenge with high skill. This suggests a linearity – progressive improvement. Perhaps for some things and some people it’s more non-linear: in life, as well as sport.

A great work, a stunning goal or a pivotal intervention – are they more likely as a ‘moment of genius’? Or perhaps as likely a moment we could potentially judge as ‘madness’, depending on the outcome. Do our greatest interventions come where we ignore risk and just ‘act’, with no conscious consideration of the chances or consequences.

There is a fate and fatalism side to these moments – whether in politics, war, life or sport. The sense that the script has already been written and destiny calls – a feeling that life stands still, the world is watching and it was meant to be.

The best goal I ever scored – volleyed low and unstoppable from a zinging cross – had that sense of time standing still. There are moments in working life too, I can recall, of almost out-of-body otherworldliness when the stakes were high, but ignored, in favour of speaking-up and speaking out.

Of course you remember the moments it came off – not when it didn’t. There’s lady luck and ‘confirmation bias’ to thank in ‘memorable’ moments too.

Perhaps what we call ‘genius’ is simply the product of a self-belief which ignores the situation and unconsidered – sometimes lucky, but often skilful – action. How many times you pull it off determines how history judges the ‘actor’.

But the ‘average’ means many must fall below, for a few to soar above. Heroes ignore the odds. Most of us consider them. But maybe we should all ignore the odds too – at least once in a while.