I starting reading a most interesting and intriguing book today. Only a chapter in and I’m already inspired to write about it.
David Epstein’s excellent The Sports Gene delves into what the mystery of elite sports, that is: what is it that makes top performers better than the rest?
The opening chapter has some great analogies, two of which are the notions of “chunking” and “automation.” In short, chunking is the instinctive ability of an athlete to perceive competitor’s body language and anticipate the outcome thereof. Automation refers to the sports-specific skills that are seemingly natural, almost hardwired into the athlete’s psychological make-up.
Epstein goes further to add that these two co-dependant attributes are not necessarily genetic traits, or as he puts it “are software, not hardware.”
I'm sure we all know of some individuals who were seemingly “naturals” in sport and academics during their formative years. In my case, I attended a primary school where not one, but two multi-talented individuals were my classmates. Freakish talents both academically and athletically, both were head-hunted by exclusive high schools here in Cape Town, and later by local and international universities. Both chose tertiary studies and corporate careers over professional sport, such was the expectation of South African society of that time. It does beg the question, however, “what if?”
What if they had pursued elite sport, given both excelled at mainstream tennis and cricket? Would they have achieved the heights that would no doubt have been expected had they adopted brawn over brains?
Maybe, maybe not.
I guess we’ll never know though, but it does seem that they were “hardwired” as natural talents from a very young age.
Then there are those late-bloomers, you know, the ones who seemingly realise their true metier later in life, all that “talent” lying dormant in their formative years only for it to emerge at the right time, that is, the perceived “right age” for entry into elite-level sports. In my experience, this latter example seems for commonplace than those of the “child prodigies” with respect to “making it” at the top level of sport.
There are scores of talented juniors who don’t seem to translate their ability to the senior ranks. Why is that? Is it lack of hunger after an adolescence spent living up to expectation?
Quite possibly.
There are some exceptions. In my years of involvement in various branches of endurance sport, I've certainly witnessed a few child prodigies who did in fact go the whole way. Two examples that come to mind are both South Africans, both were “that good” in their teens (i.e. consistently beating top senior competitors), both went on to become multiple world champions in their respective sports.
The fact that both of these guys left home at eighteen for deepest, darkest Europe and built careers and endorsements from nothing indicates factors like will, desire, hunger and resilience.
Were Simon Lessing and Conrad Stoltz “hardwired” to succeed against such odds? Possibly. More probable is that their ability to “chunk” and “automate” was honed over years of living from-hand-to-mouth in the South of France at a very young age. As Lessing once put it, it was either succeed or go home, the latter not even being an option to him.
Rather than limiting instinct and perception to their innate athletic talent, Simon and Conrad both had the ability to extend chunking and automating in a broader sense. In individual sports like triathlon, an athlete’s success is dependant upon so many factors other than actual athletic talent and ability. Travel, finance, food, accommodation - the list goes on - all need to be considered before even being able to toe the start line. The street smarts acquired in such an arena are certainly “downloadables” as Epstein puts it, and then some.
Asked to give one piece of advice to aspiring professional triathletes during a 2011 interview, Stoltz paused for a second. With the interviewer expecting some sort of training related answer, the amiable “Caveman” relayed a single sentence, concise yet so profound.
“Rather arrive too early than too late.”
Software indeed.
