"The
way he plays chess demonstrates a man's whole nature."
~Stanley Ellin
Attitude Check #6--A
Matter of Heart
"It's not in
his feet, it's in his heart..."
War Admiral and Seabiscuit,
1938--Bettman/Corbis
The legendary thoroughbred Seabiscuit faced the greatest challenge of his storied career without the aid of his long-time partner, jockey Red Pollard. A severe accident had put Pollard out of competition and George "The Iceman" Woolf would be riding Seabiscuit in Pollard's stead during the great 1938 Match Race against War Admiral. From his hospital bed prior to racetime, Pollard shared the secret of Seabiscuit’s greatness with Woolf: “It’s not in his feet; it’s in his heart.” Only months earlier, Seabiscuit had been considered no serious threat to War Admiral, a Triple Crown winner. However, Pollard knew Seabiscuit had something beyond his flying feet; he had the heart of a champion. In her marvelous book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, Laura Hillenbrand tells the story, starting from just about when the photo above was taken:
From here on in, it was up to the horse. He cocked an ear towards his rival, listening to him, watching him. He refused to let War Admiral pass. The battle was joined...The horses strained onward, arcing around the final turn and rushing at the crowd. Woolf was still, his eyes trained on War Admiral's head. He could see that Seabiscuit was looking right at his opponent. War Admiral glared back at him, his eyes wide open. Woolf saw Seabiscuit's ears flatten to his head....One horse was going to crack.
As forty thousand voices shouted them on, War Admiral found something more. He thrust his head in front....An instant later, Woolf felt a subtle hesitation in his opponent, a wavering. He looked at War Admiral again. The colt's tongue shot out of the side of his mouth. Seabiscuit had broken him....Woolf dropped low in the saddle and called into Seabiscuit's ear, asking him for everything he had. Seabiscuit gave it to him. War Admiral tried to answer, clinging to Seabiscuit for a few strides, but it was no use. He slid from Seabiscuit's side as if gravity were pulling him backwards....Seabiscuit sailed into history four lengths in front, running easy.
At the critical moment--and every competition has one--the champion is the one who refuses to quit or give in to pain, difficulty or a supposedly superior opponent. We’ve all faced that moment in a chess game...the one where the position is simply too complex, the tension is too great, or the throbbing in the back of the head so loud that we're tempted to make some move, any move, rather than finding the right solution to the problems posed by the position. That’s the kind of moment in which a champion shows his heart.
“Hey,
Pete," you may be thinking, "that’s easy for you to say, you’re a
master...I've got a lot less chance of finding the right move no matter how much
heart I have.” However, I fight the same temptation myself when facing a
particularly difficult position. “If
only I were a 2600 player,” I find myself thinking.
This mindset blinds us to the real opportunities in front of us.
The champion stays aware and keeps moving ahead, even when the challenges
seem overwhelming. Such an attitude
can produce amazing results...such as Seabiscuit's victory over War Admiral. As Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight
champion, put it, “To be a champion, fight one more round.”
If
you were born with the heart of a champion, that’s great.
And if not, then what do you do? Decide to create one in yourself.
The first step toward the determined,
indomitable heart of a champion is the decision to develop these qualities and
then live out of them.
Here are a few principles you might find helpful. The first: Take it day-by-day. To decide you will be steadfastly resolute and unwaveringly determined for the 'rest of your life' is too daunting. However, you can make this decision for today and make the same decision again tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. The habits of thought and action will be there sooner than you might think.
The second helpful principle: Be gentle with yourself. There will be days when you slip, give in too quickly or get distracted from the things you need to be doing. Get back “in the game” as quickly and effectively as you can. The fact that you didn’t follow through as you had hoped to yesterday doesn’t mean you can’t today.
Finally, keep competition in proper perspective. This is probably the greatest challenge for a serious competitor. We want so badly to win this game or this tournament that we feel crushed if we don’t. However, it is only a single game, or a single event, and no matter how important it is, there will be more. Grandmaster David Bronstein, one of the greatest players of all time, once wrote “So you blundered--okay, you did, we all do--clear your head, take a walk if need be, and then get back to the position and see what you can do.” His words are every bit as applicable to a game or a tournament as to a single move. In this regard, the words of Kipling often come back to me, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same.…”
Sprinter and missionary Eric Liddell is another who, like Seabiscuit, demonstrated the heart of a champion. Liddell summed up its essence in a voice-over during the climactic race scene at the end of the film Chariots of Fire, asking “From whence cometh the power to see the race through to the end?” He then answered his own question: “It comes from within.”
-Attitude Check #5 --The
Fourth Freedom
-Attitude Check #4 --The
Third Freedom
-Attitude Check #3 --The
Second Freedom
-Attitude
Check #2 --The
First of the Four
Freedoms
-Attitude Check #1 --The Four
Freedoms
© 2002-2004 Pete Prochaska. All rights reserved.
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