Phenomenal Phelps

What can sum up Michael Phelps better than his own words ? - "I don't want to be a second Mark Spitz, I want to be the first Michael Phelps". He values his own achievement and effort; he knows what it takes to reach where he is today. Congratulations to Phelps on his 8-gold medal haul at the Beijing Olympics. What better display of the human spirit! He went in with the stated intention to get eight golds, and he did it in style breaking seven worlds records.

Pause for a moment and think of the mental preparation to handle all the pressure. You shut yourself after every race, shut yourself from all the jamboree around you. Forget a race after it is run. Don't think about the next one when you are not done with the current. Live in the present. You put your best effort, don't worry about the result. Think of the objective thought and analysis that has gone into the effort. It would have involved dissection of all aspects of swimming a race - taking the longest possible jump into water, staying underwater for a longer time, the hydrodynamics of swimming, shortest turnaround time at the end of a lap and co-ordinating with teammates in relays. Finally, what separates the "dids" from the "did nots" is the ability and will to execute their plans. What does all this teach us? Basic lessons for life - objectivity, hard work, discipline, vision, attitude and the list will go on. A little bit of clever strategy too, I must add. Phelps must have known that the only way to ensure 8 golds is to break all world records. So he must have been far ahead of his peers during his training programme. He waited to deliver his best at the Olympics.

Sport at its highest levels, then, is a bit like life. It is a training ground for the tools required to negotiate through life. If sports thus provides what education aims to, why should sports be neglected and relegated to second rate status in our educational system? It is surely easier to create good sportsmen than it is to create good scientists, businessmen, politicians or just a good human. I am not suggesting that the effort required is any bit less, but the number of variables that need to be managed are far less. Sports is a controlled activity, a bit like experiments. Experiments help to incrementally understand the complexity of the object under study, so does sports help you discover yourself. That is true of any creative activity - be it music, writing, programming or anything else possible under the sun. Millions of kids have already stepped out of their childhood even before they realize the value of these activities.