Practice to Proceed

The pinnacle of sports is representing your country at a World Cup or Olympics. It's a goal that is not just difficult but incredibly rare. The chances of reaching that goal are indeed low, to the point of being practically microscopic, underscoring the rarity of such an achievement.

Eleven thousand athletes participated in the Paris Olympics. They were in an average age range of 20-40. Across the world, there are 2.3 billion adults in that age group. Eleven thousand is 0.0004% of that total. But that’s a world total; what about–

Australia’s population in the 20-40 age bracket is 7.74 million. We sent 460 athletes to Paris, or 0.005% of that age group. Slightly better than worldwide, but still a drop in a giant bucket.

Yes, adults in that age range cannot compete for many reasons.

The competitors were vying for 329 gold medals. Their chances of winning were better than making their country’s Olympic team, but they were still incredibly slim.

Every athlete devoted vast chunks of their lives to making the team, spending days, weeks, months, and years refining and perfecting their particular moves—practice, in other words. Raw talent will only get you so far. Elite athletes, while talented, get to where they are through hard work and practice.

Daley Thompson, a British decathlete (gold medals in Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984), used to train twice on Christmas Day because he said it gave him two days extra over his competitors.

Practice! He called it training, but he was practising if he did the same things repeatedly. We teachers have our students do it. We have them repeat to remember; we have them practice to proceed.