Stefan Holm was told he was too short to be a high jumper. But by the time he won Sweden a gold medal in the 2004 Olympics, he had honed himself into the perfect projectile. It was the result of a 15-year obsession: his whole life was aligned with this goal. If he wanted to stop at page 225 of a book, he would push himself to page 240, to train his mind to skip. “It’s all about your 10,000,” he told David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene. There were jumpers who beat him when he was young, and where were they now?
But in 2007, entering the world championships in Japan as the favorite, he faced an unknown opponent: Donald Thomas, from the Bahamas. Thomas had taken up jumping just eight months earlier, on a whim after a bet, and admitted he found the high jump “kind of boring”. He missed training – his form was all over the place – and his trainer couldn’t even persuade him to wear the right kind of shoes. But he had one major advantage: an Achilles tendon that could store just a little more elastic energy than everyone else’s. That year, Thomas jumped awkwardly over the bar to victory.
Listen to Olympians talk, and you’ll mostly hear parables that echo part one of this story – stories of iron discipline, of overcoming initial setbacks. When asked to explain his success, Michael Phelps not dwelling on his lucky genes: his flipper-like feet or amazing 6 foot, 7 in wingspan. Instead, he says things like: “if you think about doing the unthinkable, you can”; or “the more you use your imagination, the faster you go”. And here is Usain Bolt, on the secret of his victory: “Easy is not an option. No days off. Never stop.” But scientists say Bolt was shaped as if by the gods in the perfect sprinter.
Elite sport is more than usual given to the valorization of hard work and willpower. After all, the work of billions of coaches and sports psychologists – not to mention the second careers of Olympians, who translate gold medal glory into “life lessons” for the masses – depends on the idea.
But the worship of work has spread far beyond sports: it is a growing part of the culture at large. This can, I think, be traced back to the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers in 2008, popularizing the “10,000-hour rule,” the idea that hard work is not only necessary but sufficient for success. It captured the public’s imagination and became embedded in training programs for groups as diverse as violinists and hedge fund traders. The principle that everyone should drive themselves headlong into the ground has also multiplied in today’s booming self-help sector, which is merging with business advice online. YouTube is full of CEOs telling people to get up at 4am and give up a social life.
But the Olympics are also the arena in which the hardworking myth of supremacy is most often shattered. Talent also matters. Almost 60% of professional baseball players are born with superior depth perception. Eero Mäntyranta – who won seven Olympic medals in cross-country running – has a genetic mutation which gave him extra red blood cells. Studies of athletes find that the top competitors improve faster with smaller amounts of exercise than ordinary people. This extends to other fields as well. Have a bunch of kids log thousands of hours of chess, and only a few of them will be good towards the end. The amount of practice needed to become a top violinist varies greatly between individuals. Hard work is certainly important, but not everyone can grind their way to the top. This is the real lesson of the Olympics.
Does this sound like a depressing one? Maybe it is. The idea that talent is only bestowed upon people, undeservedly, at birth, can seem very undeserved. After all, individualistic cultures are raised with the idea that they can dream a life. There is inspiration in the thought that anyone can make it if they just put in the hours. But it is also, I think, a rather unhealthy principle on which to base a society.
For one thing, it leads us directly into a suffocating greenhouse culture. If hard work and achievement are joined by a straight line, why should you ever stop for a break? You think of today’s exam-ridden schoolchildren, their free time jam-packed with improvised activities – an anxious bunch, increasingly complaining of mental health issues. You also think of those who believe the business bros podcasters and try to transform their lives by living like hyperactive hermits. You wonder how many it simply doesn’t work for. There is, after all, some bias in the claim that luck played no part in your success.
In his biography, Phelps reminiscent of a snowy day from his childhood. He asked to go sledding, and remembers his mother saying, “Oh, are you going to go to the world championships this summer or are you going to break your arm now?” He didn’t go. There must have been many potential Phelpses who spent their childhoods the same way and never came close to the Olympics. Is this what we want for ourselves?
The hard work myth also needs to be busted for another reason. This rules out the chance of a champion emerging a little later in life, from a group not obsessively coached from birth by resourceful parents. This is also a lesson from the Olympics. Talent matters, and it can come from anywhere.