TThe drive to commercialize sports and commodify players may seem omnipotent, but there is an equal and opposite force in sports that is significantly less in the media spotlight but continues to grow just as inexorably. How should you describe it? We could call it the spirit and soul of sport. The intrinsic value that cannot be measured in transfer fees but has a greater and much longer lasting value. Or simply the magic of sport. It may never be the hot topic on Match of the Day, but the sport can never divorce itself from the fundamental human experience at its core.
That's why we all love watching, playing and practicing sports, be it the battle of the two Lukes in the thrilling final of the World Darts Championship, Roger Federer's great shots at Wimbledon or those moments of joy that an audience enjoys Watching feels like your favorite team does the impossible in the final seconds of extra time. We don't always question what goes on beyond the trophies and titles, but ` sports presenter Simon Mundie has written a book that helps us understand it better.
Mundie has interviewed hundreds of athletes on his Life Lessons podcast. He found that for his interviewees it wasn't the medals that were most important. It was something less tangible but much more powerful. Mundie has collected some of the best stories and derived ideas from them in his book Champion Thinking: How to Find Success Without Losing Yourself.
Mundie explores themes such as “acceptance,” “unconscious beliefs,” and “the joy of losing yourself.” It's no surprise that we bonded strongly on the podcast about my book The Long Win. In my own experiences over a decade as an Olympic athlete, I realized that the journey that began with the pursuit of the medals that everyone around me said was the most important thing soon led to a search for greater meaning.
Victoria Pendleton felt “empty” after winning gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics Photo: Paul Mcfegan/Sportsphoto/Allstar
It's a story repeated by so many athletes. Victoria Pendleton felt “empty” and “numb” when she won gold at the Beijing Olympics. Andrew Strauss asked: “Is this it?” after his side became the No. 1 Test team in the world for the first time. Tyson Fury spoke of “the emptiness” the morning after his victory over world champion Wladimir Klitschko. Adam Peaty described the destructive spiral of “constant chasing” saying: “I always thought success and happiness were defined by the gold medal or the world record. “I'm trying not to live by that anymore.” England's World Cup-winning fly-half Jonny Wilkinson spoke of his depression and hopes that the next international match or title would bring joy, but in his own words: “It's never enough”. Mundie reflects on what was missing from these athletes who reached the top of the sport.
Wilkinson features in Mundie's book and he has made great efforts to reimagine the sport. His podcast “I Am” marks a journey of self-discovery through quantum physics, Buddhism and philosophy. Wilkinson, whose extra-time drop goal went over the bar to help England win the tournament in 2003, dismantles everything we think we know about sport as brutally as he ever attacked his opponents on the pitch.
Wilkinson challenges the common stereotypes that describe him as exceptionally dedicated, evident in the hours he spent practicing his goal kicks long after his teammates had gone home. He reveals how this compulsive behavior actually caused enormous wear and tear on his body and was fueled by fear, insecurity and “a gap in self-confidence”.
Wilkinson and Mundie interviewed the philosopher and “spiritual teacher” Rupert Spira and were impressed by him. Spira's insights are about as far as it gets compared to those discussed on the Match of the Day sofa. But Spira offers answers to understand the sport in a way that the results list and the endless internationals and titles for Wilkinson never could. Spira supports Mundie in his search for the “true gold of sport” and expands his understanding of “flow” experiences in sport.
Mundie's final and most compelling chapter explores sporting moments of joy and transcendence, inhuman possibilities, a greater form of intelligence and the magic of the universe. Mundie points to Wilkinson's winning drop goal in 2003, Damon Hill's incredible throw at Suzuka in 1994, Frankie Dettori's seventh and final throw at Ascot in 1996 and Goldie Sayers' euphoric javelin throwing experience at the Beijing Olympics. In each of these moments, the athletes use similar language: Dettori says, “I felt like I was there, but I wasn't there.” Hill says, “It's like it wasn't me driving the car, but something else was drive the car.” Wilkinson says, “It wasn't me who kicked it – it was the knowledge of it.”
The pioneering psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow” for these moments of beauty, described this as a “transformation of time.” It is the ultimate human time travel available to all of us in these moments. It's easy to see how much we all crave this in our lives.
Frankie Dettori felt like he was “not there” in his last race at Ascot in 1996. Photo: Adam Butler/PA
Mundie's writing style resonates and articulates what I felt instinctively but couldn't always explain. When asked about the best moment of my rowing career, others expect the answer to be a medal race. But I always remember a few really joyful moments at a training camp on a beautiful Italian lake surrounded by mountains, where suddenly something clicked and our rowboat took off and seemed to fly effortlessly, even though we were rowing at full throttle.
Spira explains the experiences of fans and spectators who feel inspired when they witness a greater power in the game. He reinterprets the moment in which the audience feels deep joy when a goal is scored. He explains that our minds tell us that it is because a goal is scored and therefore we associate joy with scoring a goal, which is reinforced by commentators and others around us.
But Spira reads this moment differently. Up until this point, we have focused on waiting for the desired moment and anticipating a goal. When the goal is actually achieved, it is the release from this anticipation that creates joy. We no longer postpone joy until something happens in the future. We can freely connect with the present moment. Through the intense presence and connection, we lose the feeling of being separate individuals and feel part of something bigger than ourselves. It's powerful stuff, far from the typical sofa expert we know.
The mindfulness-based programs offered by the True Athlete Project (a brilliant sporting charity that I support) for elite athletes, coaches, grassroots clubs and sport leaders are sometimes ridiculed. Leaders assume that athletes have no interest in exploring their inner values or identity beyond sports, or that coaches have no interest in connecting with their work beyond winning games. But time and time again, CEO Sam Parfitt is overwhelmed by the instinctive connection to this approach and the general relief at having found what had eluded them for so long. Performance expert Owen Eastwood described his work developing high-performing 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 yearn to connect with it to connect with something greater than themselves.
Sport is a natural context for human innovation. Many athletes and coaches recognize that our physical limits are limited, but there is still much to be gained by exploring the mind more deeply. I hope that in 2024 our commentators, journalists and pundits will also take a moment to question their assumptions about what has the most value in the sport that awaits us. Mundie's book gives you a good starting point to explore this further. And I'd love to see Spira on Lineker's Match of the Day sofa.
Champion Thinking: How to Find Success Without Losing Yourself is published by Bloomsbury Tonic at £18.99. Buy it from Guardianbookshop.com for £16.71
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