Courage in sport can manifest itself in different forms. There is physical courage, where competitors risk the safety of their own bodies in an effort to improve their chances of victory.
Then there is mental courage which allows a participant to make decisions or push themselves beyond the usual bounds of their abilities.
The strength of one’s courage, whether physical or mental, can make, break or define a career.
The first is easily identifiable and is evident at any football match. The player willing to take a big hit for his team is obviously courageous, putting himself in harm’s way to gain possession of the ball or to prevent the opposition from doing so, whatever the consequence.
The second exists in any sport. It belongs to the player who is willing to take a risk to win, even if it means putting himself in danger of losing.
Think of a tennis player who has played it safe on serve throughout the match only to suddenly serve out wide looking for the line to save match point, or, the exhausted marathon runner who puts in one last desperate surge in the hope that her opponent is feeling even worse than she is.
Both decisions take courage.
If it comes off the sports person is hailed a genius. If it doesn’t they are lambasted for deviating from the game plan.
It is a tough world and cyclists don’t escape the scrutiny either.
There are those who are mentally tough, riders like Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and Peter Sagan who, rather than sit back and play things safe, have the courage to launch an attack to try and win despite the risk of criticism should they fail.
Then there is the type of courage displayed by world time-trial champion Tony Martin who found himself in a world of pain after a crash on Stage 1 of last year’s Tour.
Suffering a concussion and a contusion on his lung along with various other scrapes, bumps and bruises, Martin should have been confined to a hospital bed. Instead he rode on and eventually claimed the Stage 11 individual time trial with an average speed of over 54 kilometres-per-hour.
There are many such examples littered throughout cycling’s history.
But what of physical courage as I defined it early? The ability to overcome the fear of putting your body on the line.
Obviously cyclists will never find themselves attempting to mark a footy while running with the flight of the ball. That scenario, of running into the great unknown with heaven knows what coming at them from the opposite direction, is perhaps the sternest test that an Australian Rules footballer can face.
In the macho world of a football club, with its coaches and rabid fans expecting nothing less than total commitment to the cause, a player’s whole career can be defined by how they act in that moment and to hell with the injuries that may follow.
While football’s body-on-body physicality doesn’t exist in cycling, it does have its ‘running with the flight of the ball’ equivalents, moments that can glorify or scar a rider’s reputation.
Riding headlong towards a notorious stretch of cobbles during one of the spring classics is one such moment. Just like the footballer with his eyes on the ball, the rider knows the hit is coming.
His bike, so well behaved and easily controlled on the sealed roads, becomes a jolting, skipping, sliding beast when it rockets onto the cobbles at 50 kilometres an hour, intent on bucking the hapless rider off and sending him tumbling across the landscape.
And yet he does not soft-pedal on the approach.
The rider knows that he may not make it through unscathed. Unlike the footballer, he has had time to think about it during the kilometres beforehand. He knows what it feels like to fall at speed. He knows what it is like to break bones. And yet he pushes on regardless, intently aware that disaster may be imminent.
It’s this courage and derring-do that make Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara the riders they are. Their ability to harness their fear has helped them to conquer the cobbles and they have earned the utmost respect for doing so.
But what happens when a rider can’t conquer his or her fears?
Frenchman Thibaut Pinot is a perfect example.
It takes courage to descend a mountain. Whizzing down a narrow winding road at 100 kph with a wall of rock on one side and an abyss on the other is not to everyone’s taste.
Cancellara, Cadel Evans and Vincenzo Nibali do it extremely well. Thibaut Pinot, Andy Schleck and to a lesser extent Bradley Wiggins don’t, and they are reminded of it constantly by the fans and the media.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXqQqAc2pA
Pinot, you may remember, burst onto the scene at the 2012 Tour de France. The youngest rider in the race, he claimed Stage 8 on a difficult day that included seven classified climbs.
After finishing the Tour in tenth position overall he was widely touted as the next big thing, especially in France.
But his inability to conquer a real fear of descending has hindered his development. Despite his best efforts to rectify the problem and a promising seventh overall at last year’s Vuelta a Espana, the stigma of being scared on the downhills hangs over him, just as it does Andy Schleck.
It is a ‘running with the flight of the ball’ moment, a descent into the great unknown. Will I misjudge my line through this corner? Will I puncture? Will my tyre become unglued? Will someone crash in front of me?
Such thoughts of doom are the reasons Thibaut and Schleck reach for their brakes. Their tentative descending is the equivalent of a footballer putting in a short step to avoid getting smashed by his opponent.
Unfortunately their careers are defined by it, because those watching never forget. Once labelled, it is difficult to break the perception.
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