When the stakes are high....

"When you gamble for tiles, you are skillful. When you gamble for your belt buckle, you begin to hesitate; and when you gamble for gold, you get confused. Your skill is the same, but you get cautious because you value something outside yourself. When you do this you become awkward inside."
Lieh Tzu, Chapter 2

I've got a lot of students participating in competitions over the next few weeks (plus my friend Anna looking to retain her UK No 1 title - go Anna!) and it struck me that the quote above was quite relevant. When fencing in competition it is quite understandable that it will feel more stressful with a (sometimes self induced) pressure to do well. In sport this can be more counter productive than anything else. I was watching Wimbledon last night and Maria Sharapova (no 3 seed) got knocked out by a much lower seeded player. I was struck by the fact that Sharapova got visibly more agitated as things deteriorated (contrary to the commentator's opinion). She muttered, shrugged, frowned and generally looked increasingly exasperated the worse things got. When you consider things from her perspective then you can see why. I got the impression that she could almost see those sponsorship deals, interviews, TV appearances etc evaporating before her eyes which must have made things even more difficult. Now I'm not implying that she (or any other top tennis player) is in it purely for the money. They are elite players and as such are there to win but the commercial pressures can't help in these situations. However, I would also say that a truly great athlete should be able to deal with the most high pressure moments. I have been impressed with some of the calmness some football players have shown during penalty shoot outs in the Euro finals; you can almost tell which player will score and which will miss by the way they approach the ball; it's an amusing exercise to play the next time you're watching, although being a died in the wool rugby man I prefer to spot the kicker who slots every penalty or conversion! It's very difficult to treat every match as just another one and extremely easy to feel that all depends on the result. Having said that if you lose, you lose and there's nothing much you can do about it apart from accept it with good grace, move on and learn from it. The sun will come up the next day and the world will carry on as usual, despite your personal sporting disaster. I am not saying that participating in a competition will get any easier, just that the right level of perspective may help you deal with it. Try your best, think it through and play with the right spirit; no one can expect more....