Medal-winning brilliance requires obsession as well as dedication and skill. I can’t help wondering what these athletes’ bodies and minds have gone through over the years
Is sport good for you? I’m beginning to wonder. Ahead of the Olympics I spoke to Andy Hodge, one of our greatest rowers. He told me how, plagued by injury and illness, he battled to get to his third Games, in Rio. “Every day I was expecting my body to break,” he said, and this helped him come up with what he describes as a “relieving psychology”, which went like this: “Just keep going until your body breaks and when it does, you’ve given it a good shot.” Relieving? Hmm, if it’s got to the stage where the idea of breaking your body is affording you anything approximating relief, then you’re living in a world most of the rest of us don’t inhabit, and living a life few doctors could recommend. On the start line at Rio, Hodge said to himself: “I’m going to go and I’m going to actually break my body. This is the only mission I have today.” And a few minutes later he’d won his third Olympic gold.
We often talk about the power of the Olympics to encourage kids to take up sport, which is great. But there’s a slight dissonance here. Do we really want them to engage in it as obsessively as those whose brilliance and dedication we so admire?
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