Winning Olympian Athletes: How Are They Different From Us?

Matthew Cho
YISS High School 11th Grade

It seems that athletes who participate in the Olympics all have reached a certain level of superhuman physical and mental toughness that, for a long time, could only be described as “talent.” Often, it would seem that they simply had a knack for what they did. However, new research shows that there are a wide variety of variables that seem to set the Olympian apart from the average athlete. While good genes and a mental fortitude seem to be important as well, what often makes the difference between the layman and the medal-winner is a critical turning point in the athlete’ s life and their attitudes towards sport.

Many elite athletes possess an often unhappy critical turning point in their lives such as their parents’ divorce, death, or other losses earlier in their lives that allowed them to re- double their efforts in their sport. Although this event may be positive, they nevertheless possessed a turning point in their careers that greatly influenced them to focus even harder on their sport. It seems that a certain mixture of desperation and the drive to do whatever it takes to win is essential to becoming successful athletes. Of course, this doesn’ t mean that anyone should try to create artificial traumatic experiences in the life of a budding athlete to push them to try harder. Instead, scouts looking for promising athletes could see if their candidate has had some hard times along the way.