Stuff of Champions
I am in awe of Shaun White's performance on Valentine's Day. 2018 in the Winter Olympics.
Imagine for a moment;
He stands on the top of the world ready for his third and final run in the finals of the Half Pipe snowboarding competition,
He is in 2nd place ( he is 31 and 1st position is 12 years his junior), for any chance of winning gold he has to put in his very best performance in his life, in a career of amazing performances,
There are over 100 million people watching,
To win he knows that he has to perform back-to-back 1440's, a quadruple corkscrew of sorts, performed in opposite directions on opposite walls.
He has never ever successfully executed back-to-back 1440's ever before and the last time he tried 3 months ago he crashed, smashed his face and received 60 stiches to his face, lips & tongue!
He was in the exact same spot (behind) going into his last run in the Olympics 4 years ago and he failed (he came 4th, not a failure in ordinary peoples standards)
It is his very last performance in the Olympics (although now he is contemplating an attempt at winning gold in Skate Boarding (wheels!) in the 2020 Summer Olympics)
As he stands on the start-line he is thinking to himself;
"You could come up on any other day, when all these people aren't here, and ask me to do his back-to-back 1440's, and I would be terrified but when you've got the Olympics, and you have the dye on the pipe and the world watching, there was no doubt in my mind I was going to do the trick. I just had to land it."
The only way any human being can pull off such an enormous feat is by completely putting aside their fear of failure and just “do it”.
Believe.
And he did it to near perfection, now that is what real champions do!
Now that is inspirational