The Best - How Elite Athletes are Made

Have you ever wondered what it is about elite athletes that sets them apart from the rest? That allows them to develop the extraordinary skills and approach that enables them to perform remarkable feats under extreme pressure? And whether any of this is transferable across into your working life?

In this guest blog we are delighted to have the chance to address these questions. Hot off the Press, authored by Tim Wigmore and Mark Williams, is 'The Best, How Elite Athletes are Made'. Billed 'a must read' by England Rugby Coach Eddie Jones, 'Insightful, thoughtful and altogether wonderful' by Daniel Coyle, the book examines three main areas: circumstances; what it is that elite athletes learn to do; and how they practise and work to reach and then stay at the top.

We are delighted that Tim has given his time to address some of the big questions that have been fizzing in our heads back at S&B HQ since reading the book. These include the benefits of informal play, specialisation versus generalisation, psychological strength, and what sort of individual approach can inspire a team to greatness.

At the start of the book you explain some of the hidden factors that make elite athletes. What are these?

We think of sport as a bastion of meritocracy, but that ignores the hidden factors that determine which athletes go on to become elite. The most basic one we explore is that younger siblings have far more chance of becoming elite athletes: essentially, they benefit from playing with their older siblings, which accelerates their skill acquisition and often harnesses their competitiveness and tenacity. 

Another huge factor in who rises to the top is what type of town athletes grow up in - far more athletes come from mid-sized towns, combining the best of rural and urban living; children in the US have 15 times more chance becoming professional if they are from towns of 50-99,000. Education has a massive impact too: 7% of the British population attend private schools, but 31% of Team GB in 2016 were independently educated. 

When you’re born in the selection year - the relative age effect - also really matters. Children old for their year - ie born in September (for the UK) - generally have 3-4 times more chance of getting into academies than the youngest for their year, and significantly more chance of becoming professional. But a higher share of super-elites - so those who win Most Valuable Player awards - are actually young for their year. The reason is they have it harder at every step of the way, as they are used to playing with older kids - the difference between the oldest and youngest in an U-11 team will be 10% of their lives. But if they can cling on in the system, when they are no longer at a physical disadvantage late-borns can have an edge, because they have had to develop skills and mental strength to make up for their lack of size, similar to younger siblings. Talent developers should be thinking about ways that all children can benefit from the little sibling effect - so finding ways for the biggest children to play with older kids so they can’t just rely on their size, for example. 

You have a chapter that talks about the importance of informal play - why does this matter? 

The Parisian banlieues probably produce more elite football talent than anywhere else in the world. I visited to explore why and the greatest theme was the importance of informal play: young kids there spend so much time playing with their friends in games in local parks and streets. 

Part of the magic of street football lies in simple maths. Because games are played in smaller areas, and the number of players per side is fewer, each player gets more touches than in games with more players. Children are also exposed to playing with older and stronger players - so they can all effectively enjoy the benefits of playing with older siblings. The very chaos of these games gives players the tools to thrive and adapt in structured games. 

The number of hours of informal play children do is a huge predictor of future success. At Premier League academies, the number of hours of informal play correlates with which players are offered contracts and which are released - but the number of hours of formal play between the two groups do does not correlate at all.

One of the big debates in sport is around early specialisation versus a more generalist approach for a longer period of time. This issue is equally of relevance in other sectors: for example, from my old profession of law, the best time for lawyers to start specialising in a particular area is a constant area of debate. What lessons have you learnt from the research you did for the book?

The answer depends on a load of factors: what the individual child wants, the sport in question - you need far more hours of practice in football than a sport like rowing. The only way to definitively prove the right age to specialise would be to select kids every year to do a controlled experiment - making some specialise, making others who had shown equal aptitude play a range of sports and seeing who ultimately did better. Obviously we aren’t happy to use kids as guinea pigs, so what we are left with is retrospective studies of specialists v non-specialists. These aren’t ideal: we know that humans’ memories are flawed, and some studies don’t even define specialisation properly.

That said there are important lessons we can learn. We know that early specialisation increases risks of burnout and dropout, so for athletes’ well-being specialising later - meaning around the age of 14 - is better. And we know that the earlier a child specialises, the more likely they are to specialise in a sport that isn’t really their best fit: for instance, if a small child who loves basketball gives up basketball aged 11 to focus on football, he might then have a growth spurt and realise he was better suited to basketball all along, had he not abandoned it too early. 

There is also some evidence - and, interestingly, football academies themselves are increasingly acting on this - that playing multiple sports can help a child’s movement and motor skill development. For instance, Novak Djokovic credits his slide in tennis to skiing as a kid. 

In most sports the optimum seems to be an early engagement model. Essentially this is a hybrid model, involving a kid engaging early and practising a lot in their main sport, while also playing as many other sports as they want. Overall, in most instances this approach is best for both the child’s overall well-being and their chances of becoming an elite athlete. 

In the book you spend quite a bit of time looking at the psychological strength that elite athletes have, and the component parts of this. Can you pick out some of the key areas for our readers?

One of the fascinating interviews we did in our book was with Siya Kolisi about the psychology of greatness and his drive. ‘I have no doubt I had more desire. I have no doubt I had more hunger and can’t even lie about that or be modest about it – I really wanted it and still do,’ he tells us. ‘Sometimes you don’t want to get up, get out of bed in the morning, when it’s cold in winter. But I have no choice – I have to go.’

Like Kolisi, elite athletes generally have huge intrinsic motivation - motivation that comes from within them; many also have high extrinsic motivation, seeking rewards like money or praise. Athletes tend to have an unusual amount of grit, and most are perfectionists. The Great British Medallists Study compared elite with super-elite athletes, and found that 14 of the 16 super-elites reported perfectionist tendencies, compared with only five of those who were classed as elite. This suggests that perfectionism is part of what distinguishes the very best athletes from the rest. Interestingly, the very best athletes are more likely to have suffered adversity in sport early in their career - and the ability to bounce back from failure is part of what distinguishes them from ‘almosts’, who often have a smooth ride and then don’t have the tools to cope with their first major failures. We also explore the toil that being the best takes: elite athletes are more likely to suffer from depression than average. 

In the Chapter 'How to Lead' you examine how players can inspire their teams to greatness. What common themes did you find? 

This chapter was really fun to write, partly because these topics aren’t actually explored very often. We interviewed Shane Battier, who is regarded as one of the best teammates in NBA history - uniquely, he was involved in two of the four longest winning streaks in NBA history, and won the Teammate of the Year award in his last year. Battier talks about how individual and team incentives may not always align - you get more glory if you take more shots, even though your teammates may be in better positions - and the best teammates learn how to put themselves second: “In sports like basketball there’s a delicate balance between doing what’s best for you and doing what’s best for the team.” I think that’s a great way of thinking about these themes.

Research shows how more cohesive teams are more successful at all levels of sport. A good simple illustration of this is in doubles tennis. A study found that winning pairs spoke twice as much as losing teams. The successful teams not only communicated more, they also communicated differently, speaking more about task-relevant action statements – what they should do in the match, like getting to the net sooner – and being more consistent in their interactions from point to point. More of the communication in losing teams was about matters irrelevant to their tasks – including complaining about conditions in the game or their shoes.

Tim Wigmore is a sports journalist for The Daily Telegraph. He also contributes to publications including The Economist, The New York Times, The Spectator and The New Statesman. He is the co-author of Cricket 2.0, the Wisden Book of the Year. His new book, The Best: How Elite Athletes are Made, is out now in the UK, and is released on December 1 in the USA. It is available to buy in all good bookshops and online. Click here to order through Amazon