by The drive to commercialize and commodify sport may seem powerful, but there is an equal and opposite force in sport that receives far less media spotlight but continues to grow just as relentlessly. How to describe it? We could call it the spirit and soul of sport. The intrinsic value that cannot be measured in transfer fees but has greater and longer lasting value. Or simply the magic of sport. It may never be the hot topic on Match of the Day, but sport cannot cut itself off from the basic human experiences at its core.
That’s why we all love to watch, play and engage in sport, whether it’s the battle of the two Lukes in the final of the world darts championship, Roger Federer’s stunning shots at Wimbledon, or the moments that joy that a crowd feels when they watch. their favorite team does the impossible in the dying seconds of extra time. We don’t always stop to ask what goes on beyond the trophies and titles, but BBC sports presenter Simon Mundie has written a book to help us understand it more.
Mundie has interviewed hundreds of athletes on his Life Lessons podcast. He found that the coins were not the most important to his interviewees. It was something less tangible but much more powerful. Mundie has collected some of the best stories and extracted the ideas from them in his book Champion Thinking: How To Find Success Without Losing Yourself.
Mundie explores themes of “acceptance”, “unconscious beliefs” and “the joy of losing oneself”. It’s no surprise that we made a strong connection in the podcast about my book The Long Win. In my own experience over the past ten years as an Olympic athlete, I recognized the journey that began with the pursuit of medals that everyone around me said was the most important and soonest pursuit. for more meaning.
It’s a story echoed by so many athletes. Victoria Pendleton felt “empty” and “numb” after winning gold at the Beijing Olympics. Andrew Strauss asked “Is that it?” after his side became the No 1 Test team in the world for the first time. Tyson Fury spoke of “the void” this morning after beating world champion Wladimir Klitschko. Adam Peaty described the destructive spiral of “constant pursuit”, saying: “I always thought that success and happiness were defined by the gold medal or the world record. I try not to live with that anymore.” England’s World Cup-winning half-back Jonny Wilkinson has spoken of his depression and hopes that the next cap or title will bring joy, but in his own words, “it’s never enough”. Mundie considers what these athletes who reached the pinnacle of the sport lacked.
Wilkinson has contributed to Mundie’s book and has gone a long way to rethinking sport. His podcast “I Am” depicts a journey of self-discovery through quantum physics, Buddhism and philosophy. Wilkinson, who sent his extra-time goal over the bar to win the tournament for England in 2003, dismantles everything we think we know about the sport as brutally as he tackles his opponents on the pitch .
Wilkinson defies the common cliches that have defined him as extremely dedicated, illustrated by the hours he spends practicing his goal kicks long after his teammates have gone home. He reveals how this obsessive behavior caused massive wear and tear on his body and was driven by fear, insecurity and a “self-confidence gap”.
Wilkinson and Mundie were interviewed by philosopher and “spiritual teacher” Rupert Spira. Spira’s insights are about as far as you can get from those discussed on the Match of the Day couch. However Spira offers answers to make sense of the sport in a way that is less than the endless caps and titles for Wilkinson. Spira supports Mundie in his search for the “real gold of sport”, expanding his understanding of “flow” experiences in sport.
Mundie’s final and most significant chapter explores sporting moments of joy and transcendence, inhuman possibility, a greater form of intelligence, the magic of the universe. Mundie references Wilkinson’s winning goal in 2003, Damon Hill’s incredible drive at Suzuka in 1994, Frankie Dettori’s seventh and final ride at Ascot in 1996 and Goldie Sayers’ euphoric experience of throwing the javelin at the Beijing Olympics. In each of these moments, the athletes use the same language: Dettori says: “I felt I was there, but I wasn’t.” Hill says: “It’s as if I wasn’t driving the car, something else was driving the car.” Wilkinson said: “It wasn’t me who was kicking him – it was an acquaintance.”
The innovative psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow” for these moments of beauty, described this as a “time shift”. He is the ultimate time travel person available to us all in these moments. It’s easy to see how we all miss that in our lives.
There is resonance in Mundie’s writing, expressing what I instinctively felt but didn’t always know how to explain. When asked to share the best moment of my rowing career, others expect the answer to be a medal-winning race. But my mind always jumps to a few moments of pure joy at a training camp on a beautiful Italian lake surrounded by mountains where things suddenly clicked and our rowing boat took off, flying forward with seemingly no effort, though that we were rowing flat out.
Spira explains the experiences of fans and spectators who feel inspired by watching a greater force at play. He redefines that moment when the crowd feels great joy when a goal is scored. He explains that our mind tells us that it is because a goal is being scored so we are happy to be associated with scoring a goal, which is further reinforced by commentators and others around us.
But Spira reads that moment differently. Until then, we were focused on waiting for a moment we would like it to happen, hoping for a goal. When the goal actually happens, it is the release and relief from that anticipation that creates great joy. We are not happy to put it on hold until something happens in the future. We can freely connect with the present moment. By being so intimately present, we lose the feeling of separate individuals and feel part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s powerful stuff, a world away from the usual couch teaching we get.
Related: Sport is not just about winning – it has lessons to teach us about life
The mindfulness programs provided by The True Athlete Project (a great sports charity I support) for elite athletes, coaches, grassroots sports clubs and sports leaders are sometimes heartening. Leaders assume that athletes will not be interested in exploring their intrinsic values or identity outside of sport or that coaches will not be interested in connecting with the work they do after winning games. Time and again, chief executive Sam Parfitt has been struck by the instinctive connection to this approach and the common relief of finding what they have been missing for so long. Performance expert Owen Eastwood described his work developing high-performance teams to me as a “spiritual challenge” and said that, despite warnings that players would resist his approach, he had yet to find an athlete who didn’t want to. get in touch with something more. than themselves.
Sport is a natural context for human innovation. Many athletes and coaches are realizing that our physical limits are limited but there is still so much to gain from a deeper exploration of the mind. I hope that in 2024 our commentators, journalists and viewers will take some time to challenge the assumptions they are making about the greatest value in sport that awaits us. Mundie’s book gives them a good starting point to explore this further. And I would love to see Spira on the Match of the Day Lineker sofa.
Champion Thinking: How To Find Success Without Losing Yourself is published by Bloomsbury Tonic at £18.99. Buy it at shopbook guardian.com for £16.71
