THE CREATIVE ATHLETE

Issue 1--What Are You Trying to Accomplish as an Athlete?

To map out an athletic career, you need to decide what you want to achieve and why.

Maybe you love sports so much that you'd be satisfied with just enough income to cover training expenses.

Maybe you want to become rich and famous and you think sports will get you there.

Maybe you've created a new sport and want to promote it.

Different athletes have different goals.

Some have very ambitious ones. They want to be the best in the world and set records.

Some have more modest goals. They aim for personal bests.

Others aren't interested in measurable achievements at all. They just want to enjoy themselves.

Examples of athletes motivated by the desire to win:

• Jimmy Connors (the top men's tennis player in the mid-1970s who was ranked number one for a record 159 consecutive weeks) said, "There was no money when I started so you went out to be the best player The winning was the only thing." (1)
  
  
• Martina Navratilova (who holds the record for the most singles titles won by a professional tennis player) expressed similar sentiments when she was competing. " the money is still an incentive, but I'm probably the last of the generation of just playing tennis for the purity of the game. Nothing else mattered; I just wanted to win on the tennis court." (2)

Examples of athletes who see sports as a means to an end:

• Sprinter and former 100m world record holder Leroy Burrell, talking about himself and his Santa Monica Track Club teammates, said, "We're not in this sport because we like it or we want to earn our way through school. We're in it to make money." (3)
  
  
• Dawn Staley (twice the NCAA Women's basketball player of the year, and a member of the 1996 U.S. women's Olympic basketball team) saw basketball as a way to get an education. "I played football, baseball, whatever the season called for. Then one day it clicked in my mind Basketball was the only thing that could give me a chance to go to college." (4)

Examples of athletes who train and compete as way to define who they are:

• Skier Matt Grosjean, a member of the US Ski team, said, "To me, the whole thing about competing in a sport, whether it is ski racing or track and field, is the journey. My ski racing career is just one way to for me to figure out who Matt Grosjean is--what my weaknesses are, what my strengths are." (5)
  
  
• Triathlete Mark Allen (who retired from the Hawaii Ironman in 1995 after winning it for the sixth time) said about the race: "For me, it's a great expression of who I am and what I can do and it feels good to be able to do it. Each time I go over there, it shows me a little about myself. It shows you the difference between who you think you are and who you really are.

"When it finally comes together it's like you step through a doorway into an unknown part of yourself that allows you to put it together on that day, and it's an incredible feeling. I don't go back just to create that feeling but more because I've realized there's a little more inside of me that I want to pull out." (6)

• Sandy Barwick, an ultramarathoner, explained why she ran a 1,300-mile race. "When I'm running, and when I hit the finish line, I'm fulfilled. I call this race my stairway to heaven: I'll never do it again, but when it's over, if I never do another thing in my life, this will be enough." (7)
  
  
• Scott Weber, another endurance runner who completed the first triple crossing of Death Valley, gave this quote: "I was a very poor athlete when I was a kid. I was a guy who couldn't make the Little League team or the junior high basketball team. I think my excursions into endurance sports at first were to prove to myself I could be an athlete, and since then it's become a much more personal experience. You move from doing things to show other people you could, to where you do things to look into yourself, into your soul. What's attractive about a run such as Death Valley is that really nobody cares. There are no fans, no people hopping up and down ..." (8)
  
  
• John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania, competing in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, injured his knee in the marathon and finished last. Asked why he did not quit to spare himself further pain, he replied, "My country did not send me 7000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7000 miles to finish it." (9)

 

1 Rocky Mountain News, March 28, 1992.

2 USA Today, February 17, 1992.

3 The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1990.

4 San Diego Union-Tribune, July 22, 1996.

5 Rocky Mountain News, December 9, 1993.

6 Rolling Stone, Spring Style, 1994.

7 The New York Times, October 3, 1991.

8 Rocky Mountain News, September 15, 1994.

9 Parade Magazine, April 21, 1991.

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