How athletes will be taking a ‘Long Win’ approach to find a competitive advantage in Paris

How to look for the ‘Long Win’ lessons in performance at Paris 2024

Written by Keynote Speaker, Author & Senior Performance Consultant Dr. Cath Bishop. 

We’ve passed the 100 days to Paris milestone! What performance lessons might we learn from our aspiring Olympians and Paralympians this summer? How are our athletes changing their approaches to deliver under the greatest of pressures?  

Team GB have ranked highly in medal tables since London 2012 but we shouldn’t interpret that to mean success starts and stops at the medal table. There is a deeper, longer-lasting success to be found in the rich human stories that play out in front of us. Stories of serendipity for some athletes and cruel misfortune for others. Stories of overcoming adversity and succumbing to adversity. Stories of integrity under pressure, and inevitably, a few stories of cutting ethical corners in the pursuit of the wrong sort of glory. Plus stories of breathtaking, impossible brilliance when it matters most, and the tightest of margins separating athletes of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes from around the world. The full value of the Olympics can’t ever be summed up in a medal table. 

Hollywood scripts and media narratives can lead us to think it’s only about who crosses the line first, an approach mirrored potentially in our own experiences of education and work. But advances in psychology, culture and performance are showing us that there is a better, longer-lasting way to define and pursue success. We see this first-hand in our coaching, facilitating and consulting work at Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? and it’s been core to the ideas and research in my book ‘The Long Win’.  

Narrow definitions of success based on temporary, short-term and material criteria – such as winning the next race and getting a medal, or simply hitting the KPIs for the next quarter in the workplace – in themselves don’t help us optimize performance over the long-term and explore what we’re capable of together. Such ‘short win’ measures of success in fact can cramp our creativity, stifle our resilience, block collaboration and constrain our motivation to explore our collective potential, in essence impeding performance and ultimately results over time. 

We have seen gold medallists and world champions ranging from Victoria Pendleton to Jonny Wilkinson cite feelings of emptiness, unfulfillment, even depression after coming first and reaching that longed-for summit. They realise that the medal or trophy in itself has little of lasting value – it’s an inanimate lump of metal. Its value lies in what it represents, their personal growth and development and the relationships formed along the way.   

So how can we invest in those deeper performance foundations:

1). The individual and collective growth of teams who have develop physically, mentally and emotionally, such as the legendary GB women’s hockey team in Rio 2016 who won gold, held up the 10 o’clock news, and delivered under pressure because of the incredible squad trust, strength and meticulous preparations they had invested in every day for years. (They remain a tight-knit group, caring for each other as life unfolds after hockey, and with regular reunions);

Kate Richardson-Walsh winning Gold


2). The experiences we have in pursuit of excellence, within a values-based, integrity-fuelled environment, where athletes feel supported and challenged. The sort of cultures that we have seen Sarina Wiegman and Gareth Southgate develop with their England teams, a world away from the horror stories of abuse in the gymnastics world that shocked us all a few years ago.

3). The connections to a strong community inside or outside sport, incredible friendships and broader impact, such as the Lionesses talked about when winning the Euros but seeing their greatest success as inspiring the next generation of girls to follow their dreams. 

These are all core areas for us to invest in in our businesses: the learning and growth in our teams as well as the outputs and results; caring about and shaping the experiences that our teams have in pursuit of the next set of results; and valuing relationships within and across teams, role modelling the importance of connection in every conversation and ‘how we do business’, putting trust before transactions. 

These teams and athletes show the power of a ‘Long Win’ approach, whereby there is: 

  • ‘Clarity’ around the purpose of the medal – its wider, longer-term meaning – and the strong values-based culture within which it’s pursued. 

  • A ‘Constant learning’ mindset which adheres to sports psychology’s lesson number one: focus on being the best at improving, if you want to be the best at winning. A philosophy that co-founder Ben Hunt-Davis’ Olympic winning crew took to heart as they set about changing their collective level of performance in Sydney.

  • The prioritisation of human ‘Connections’, whether that’s coach-athlete, athletes within teams, or athletes and the watching spectators and fans. Relationships are critical to communicating effectively under pressure and having the challenging conversations needed in the pursuit of excellence and feeling part of something that matters.

I can’t wait to see some of the ‘Long Winners’ in Paris whose stories will unfold and inspire us all, whichever way the results actually fall: 

  • Imogen Grant aims to become the first lightweight woman rower to make the podium, having bounced back with remarkable level-headedness, composure and grit after coming fourth and missing a medal in Tokyo by 0.01 seconds. She’s been World Champion every year since. She’s also using her growing platform to raise awareness about river pollution and shows how she brings sustainability into her life as an athlete, a role model for social responsibility in sport.

  • Adam Peaty grows with every step of his journey. His painful realization that his gold medals weren’t the key to everlasting happiness out of the pool and his mental health challenges which he shared publicly have been a key part of his search for a renewed internal strength to try for an incredible third successive Olympic win. Whether he crosses the line first or not, his is a human journey worth its weight in gold.
 
  • Tom Daley, competing at his fifth Olympics is sure to leave us spellbound with his split-second precision and his evolution from boy to family man (via knitting guru!).

How we define success matters.

It’s the full stories of these athletes and teams that offer us the greatest inspiration and insight into performance, not just for the few seconds they cross the line first if all works out, or those brief celebratory moments they may enjoy on the podium. Their stories before and after crossing the finish line give us insights into the greater value that can come from a purpose-driven pursuit of success, fuelled by a constant learning mindset and shared with others along the way. That’s the philosophy at the heart of ‘The Long Win’, my book first published in 2020 that has an updated 2nd edition coming out on 21 May 2024 with a new chapter and new stories.

As part of developing your ‘Long Win Thinking’ and approach to performance, be sure to look out in Paris not just for who wins a medal, but for the story of how they went about it, the values and purpose that have driven their pursuit of high performance, their response to adversity, the culture behind the teams that draw the best out of each other when it matters most and the insights into how they have learnt and grown not just physically but psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and look for the wider positive impact those athletes are having on the world around them beyond the medal around their necks. You might not get all these insights from the commentators or newspaper headlines, but get curious to look beyond those for the real gold.

Cath works as a speaker, coach and consultant for Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? and the 2nd edition of ‘The Long Win’ is out on the 21st of May 2024. 

If you would like to find out more about Cath’s work at Will It Make The Boat GO Faster? please do get in touch via the button below. 

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