Читать книгу Gold Rush - Michael Johnson - Страница 6

From the moment the UK contingent unveiled its deceptively simple preview of the 2012 Games during the closing ceremony of the 2008 Games in Beijing, it was clear that this would be Britain’s greatest sporting occasion in living memory. London’s Games will provide a total contrast to the 2008 Games. Despite the incredible spectacle that Beijing put on during its opening and closing ceremonies, the Games themselves lacked the festive, fun and exciting atmosphere that everyone associates with the Olympics. This time around, we’re going to have a celebration of the Olympic spirit and of the athletes, who will have the chance of a lifetime to achieve the apex of their sporting careers.

As somewhat of an honorary Brit, I will be rooting for those athletes from the UK who will have to contend with the monstrous pressure of expectation from a home crowd feverishly anticipating a national gold rush.

Will the more than 500 men and women competing under the Union Jack be able to deliver? British athletes in some sports, like cycling, are poised to capitalise on prior success and the support of Queen and country. But Olympic gold could prove a tall order for many others because the British system of developing athletes, at one time one of the best in the world, has fallen behind over the last couple of decades. And while there have been efforts to get back to where they once were, some of the efforts, in athletics for example, could have been implemented a little too late to have a real effect on the medal haul in London.

On the other hand, this is the Olympic Games, where anything can happen. Even better, this Olympic competition is being held in the UK. A home Olympics is a great and rare opportunity for any athlete. Competing in the Olympics on home soil, if managed properly, can prove competitively advantageous. But capitalising on those advantages isn’t easy. This is the toughest sports competition in the world, where the best athletes in the world challenge each other and themselves. As if that weren’t enough pressure, this pinnacle of athletic competition only takes place every four years. If successful, your name will be in the history books for ever, and there is no sporting event with a richer history than the Olympic Games. Miss your opportunity, on the other hand, and you may never get another.

Whether you’ll succeed or fail, no one knows. But one thing is certain: everyone will be watching. And even as Olympic stars emerge during the London 2012 Games, other future Olympic champions will catch the dream.

My first experience of seeing an Olympics was the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. It was exciting to watch, but I honestly had no idea that four years later I would be trying out for the US Olympic team, eight years later I would compete in my first Olympics, and 12 years later I would be making Olympic history as the Games returned to the US in Atlanta. My journey through those 12 years included a hell of a lot of fun, a lot of pain, some incredibly rewarding achievements, some major setbacks, and memories that will last the rest of my life. In fact, my entire life is pretty much defined by the events of those 12 years from 1984 to 1996.

This book is not just about my journey but about the journey of many Olympic icons, past and present. You will hear about all of our stories. How we got our start in our respective sports, and our unique journeys to Olympic success. Our failures, our successes and, most importantly, in our own words, our own opinions of how and why we were successful in becoming Olympic champions – in many cases more than once.

Gold Rush attempts to explain what it takes to achieve this very rare level of success, investigating the similarities in the approaches taken by each of the champions, and in the make-up of the champions themselves, as well as the differences between them and their approaches. After looking back at my own road to success and then interviewing more than a dozen Olympic champions to hear their stories and find out more about their road to success, I discovered that the similarities far outweighed the differences. I also confirmed something that I have always felt: that most fans aren’t fully aware of the really significant and fine details about their Olympic heroes that make them special. Many Olympic fans have a good 30,000-foot view understanding of Olympic athletes, what makes them tick, and how they achieve such amazing success. This book gets right down to a face-to-face level with Olympic success through the stories told to me – one Olympic champion having a frank, unguarded, casual conversation with another Olympic champion.

I already knew many of these athletes before I interviewed them, and in some cases, as with Seb Coe and Cathy Freeman, they have been long-time friends of mine and we have talked about everything but our Olympic success. So it was truly an enlightening experience for me to talk with these great champions and compare notes not only about our individual Olympic journeys but about what we believe is required for ourselves or anyone else to be successful at the Olympic level. A lot of what I believed already was confirmed from talking with these champions, but I also learned about different approaches from my own that proved successful.

I have always believed that I could put together a pretty good manual for Olympic success. But after talking with so many different Olympic champions who had to overcome multiple different obstacles and challenges en route to their Olympic success, I gained new insight into the mental and physical dedication required to get there.

So as the anticipation of the 2012 Olympic Games rises to fever pitch, let’s look at just what it takes to build an Olympic champion.