“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Competitive Fire
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Michael Clarkson, Human Kinetics, 1999
This book is largely about how human desires and needs can create powerful forces in the world of sports. Its main issue is that many superstar athletes reach peak performance more often than their opponents and stay at the top longer during their careers because they provoke and then control their stress emotions as an additive to performance both over the short term and the long haul.
The book, which claims to be based on based on 1000 interviews, is replete with anecdotes and quotes from athletes but has very little evaluation. It is full of assertion and generalization
He analyses stress and suggests that the key to success is to “tap into the so-called “negative” emotions, such as aggression, fear, and anxiety”. (Page 16)
The book gives examples of Great performances arising from anger:
Example of marker annoying Michael Jordan who then scored 51 points and idea that Michael Jordan’s strongest motivation was vindictiveness (Page 56-57)
Mike Powell’s World LJ record motivated by anger (Page 62-66)
Martina Navratalova seeing a Wimbledon final as gladatorial (Page 66-67)
“Well-adjusted, happy people do not make great athletic competitors, The secret is converting insecurities into a powerful force”. Brooks Johnson, former U.S. women’s Olympic track coach, (Page 78)
“To the girls that gave me a hard time high school, I’d like to say thank you. I think I would have the drive I have if it wasn’t for them… “ Amy van Dyken Olympic swimming medallist (page 93-94)
There is a fascinating account of Michael Johnson winning the Olympic Gold medal in 1996 with great fear “of ending my career without having won an individual gold medal” (Page 132-35)
I felt that his assertion that the death of Diana motivated Rusedski to win US Open, Greg Norman to win Canadian Open, David Coultard to win Italian GP and England to beat Moldova 4-0 (Page 143) was utter nonsense. Surely England would expect to beat Moldova by four goals any time they played.
The book quotes psychologist Thomas Gilovich of Cornell who found that athletes apparently feel better about coming in third in a competition than second, because the pain of being so close to the top prize hurts so badly.( Page 229)
The book states that Hans Segers was convicted of criminal match-fixing, although they later had the conviction overturned. (Page 236) This is not an accurate account of what happened. This made me wonder whether there were equal inaccuracies in material with which I was less familiar.