Transcript
Champion
athletes give tips on winning headgames
MAXINE
McKEW: What do Herb Elliott, John Eales, Robyn Maher, Peter Brock and Glynnis
Nunn all have in common?
As well as being champion athletes, they're also contributors to a book to be
launched tomorrow called 'Winning Attitudes'.
It's a unique insight into the psychology of winning, and resulted from a
series of seminars organised by Herb Elliott last year for
And Herb Elliott should know.
He's considered by many to have been the greatest middle distance runner in
history.
He retired unbeaten at the age of 22, having won gold with a record-breaking
win at the 1960 Rome Games.
Throughout his track and field career, he was never beaten in a major 1,500
metre event.
Olympics reporter Sean Murphy spoke to Herb Elliott earlier today.
SEAN MURPHY: Herb Elliott, you're book is called 'Winning Attitudes', what does
it take to win?
HERB ELLIOT, OLYMPIC ATHLETICS CHAMPION: What does it take to win?
Well, you'll have to buy the book.
There's a whole series of subjects that it covers in there, like nervousness,
disappointment, what you think about your competitors, what you thought about
at that moment when you're in the blackest moment of your preparation.
Did you dream?
And how does that apply to the daily process?
I mean, everything's in there because we've selected 10 or 12 of our top
athletes just to share with you the way they felt about all of those things.
It's a bit voyeur, really -- you're really looking into their minds, and their
state of mind in various parts of their development of their sporting career
and through that, learning how to win.
SEAN MURPHY: In the make-up of a champion, how much of it is physical and how
much is mental?
HERB ELLIOT: Pretty hard to answer that question, but there are certain bits of
being a champion that you're born with and you really have no control over --
you're just blessed, you're just lucky -- but there are other bits, which are
called attitudes, which you can learn.
SEAN MURPHY: In your part of the book, you actually write that even champions
are still riddled with uncertainty and doubt, vulnerability.
How do you turn those sort of negatives into
positives?
HERB ELLIOT: Every now and then I've heard a person being interviewed who'd
said, "I was absolutely confident "and I knew I was going to
win", and all that sort of stuff.
Everybody that I've spoken to on a face-to-face basis about that, they haven't
felt that at all.
Certainly, a part of them thinks "I'm going to win", certainly a bit
of them when they're on the starting line has the confidence that "I've
done the work "and therefore I'm going to produce my best today," but
in there, mixed in with all that is fear, is uncertainty, is doubt, so there's
a whole strange sort of pot pourri of emotions that's rushing around in your
belly.
That's what nervousness is all about.
If you were totally confident, you wouldn't feel nervous.
I don't know anybody at the start of a major event, when failure is fronting
up, right standing on the blocks there with them, who doesn't feel some sense
of nervousness.
COMMENTATOR, ARCHIVE FOOTAGE,
100 yards to go -- it looks like gold for Australia --
SEAN MURPHY: Even your most
famous run, the 1960 Olympic 1,500 metres, even at the halfway point at that,
you write about how you were faced with a stark choice.
Can you talk us through that?
HERB ELLIOT: Yeah, I was the favourite and I felt exceptionally vulnerable.
The gap between what I felt about myself and where the world was placing me
was huge.
And I got to the halfway mark, I can still remember
the white line shooting past underneath my feet.
I was about fourth.
This was the moment when I was going to make my move, and, I guess, somewhere,
I must have thought somewhere inside me a voice would come up saying, "This
is the moment, this is what you've been training for, this is where you're
going to establish your mark on this race, this is where you're going to show
your superiority".
The voice that came up into my head said, "Herb, you're buggered."
It was that little negative voice that attacks every one of us every day when
we're trying to improve ourselves and taking ourselves out of our comfort
zone.
Anyway, part of the training of an athlete is how to resist that, how to overcome
it, how to ignore it, which is in that book.
So I ignored it, but it was close.
It's always close because that voice is so powerful.
And I went on and passed all the guys and ended up winning by a record margin,
breaking the world record and all of that sort of
things.
If I had of listened to that little voice at the halfway
mark, I may not have been working with the Australian Olympic Committee and
Australian athletes now.
I certainly wouldn't have had a street named after me in the
SEAN MURPHY: What about with athletes today who give up everything for their
Olympic goal?
I mean, is there a danger that because they're so centred on that goal, they're
not prepared to take risks?
HERB ELLIOT: Absolutely.
The Australian Olympic Committee has a number of programs encouraging our
Olympic athletes to diversify their lives into broader things than just sport.
If you have a broader outlook on life and a broader life experience, you're
prepared to take a big risk in one part of it because -- as soon as I define
clearly what my goals are, I define what failure is.
A lot of people avoid doing that because they don't want failure to be clearly
understood.
They avoid it by saying, "I'm going to do my best," which is easy
to get around.
Athletes who devote their entire life to sport, often
are not prepared to take that risk because failure is devastating to them.
SEAN MURPHY: You're also heading a counselling service for athletes who miss
out on Olympic selection.
How devastating is it to them?
HERB ELLIOT: It's very emotional.
I mean, if you've been trying to get into an Olympic Games, for instance,
you've probably travelled a lot, you've given up your job, you may be training
for four or five hours a day, your whole social life is shaped by what you're
doing and your waking moments are preoccupied with what you're trying to do
in your sport.
All a sudden, that's all gone.
All of a sudden, you've gone from being an athlete who, he thinks or she thinks
is going to make the Olympic team, into an athlete that's missed out.
It's just a whole change of life experience that people have to deal with.
SEAN MURPHY: So how does counselling help?
What do you say to someone whose dream has just been shattered?
HERB ELLIOT: Well, it's not my job, but we have experts in it through the
State Institutes of Sport and through the 'ACE' program in
I think the first thing is to make the athlete understand that "the
frustration, the anger, the deep disappointment, the blackness that you're
feeling, hey, that's just normal.
If you didn't feel like that, you wouldn't be a human being.
Don't forget you are an elite athlete.
You have contributed an enormous amount to your sport.
And because of what you've done, the people who have been selected in the team
are at a higher standard than if you were not there.
And, hey, don't forget the journey you've been on.
You've learnt an enormous amount about yourself, so when you look back on it,
this has been a wonderful experience for you."
That sort of thing, I would think.
SEAN MURPHY: There'll also be huge disappointment for many of the athletes who
do make it to
What is it about the Olympics that has its own
character and flavour where often favourites do fail?
HERB ELLIOT: It's a moment, it's an experience of
enormous passion.
Even as a spectator, you can tremble with excitement when you're sitting up in
the stand waiting for the start of a major event.
I guess that's because in front of you, are 10,000 of the world's greatest
athletes.
Every one of them has been striving for perfection for say the last four years.
They come to one place and they're all there at the one time and they've got
one moment in that time where they either do it or blow it.
If they blow it, they've got to wait another four years for another chance.
So there is no other human formula that I'm aware of that develops such a
cauldron of passion and emotion as the Olympic Games.
That's what we like to watch, and that's why it really turns us on.
It's a fantastic experience.