When Rich Roll’s father saw him swinging his arms before the swimming portion of his first Ironman, he cried. His dad said that he was emotional because Rich was swinging his arms the same way he would before any swimming race, from the time when he started competing around age 10. Rich was now in his early 40s and the 30 intervening years had been as rough as the ocean waters he was about to jump into. Rich had gone from a high school swim standout, to a Division I swimmer at Stanford, to law school at Harvard, and to life as an attorney and (barely) functional alcoholic only to find a path back to sobriety and achievements he never thought possible. There was a lot of ups and downs for his father to be emotional about.
The downward spiral, described in his book Finding Ultra, began when Rich was on a college recruiting trip for swimming. He was given a beer by a swimmer he idolized—someone who had just competed in the previous Olympics—and he drank it. It was his first taste of alcohol, and it flipped a switch inside.
By the time Rich’s dad saw him warming up for his Ironman, Rich had not only conquered his addiction to alcohol, but he had also transformed his body and mind by training for long-distance races and changing his eating habits to adopt a plant-based diet. Rich’s break from addition took several attempts, and his path wasn’t easy. But a theme running through Rich’s story is the value of sport, the thrill of competition, and the power it has to change lives.
Rich’s personal story has, in fact, changed a number of lives. His story is cited by many as the reason they decided to stop drinking or to start exercising. Roll cites another person who inspired him, David Goggins. Goggins mainly grew up in Indiana in extremely difficult circumstances. I’ve read his first book, Can’t Hurt Me, which is a gut punch for anyone who has hesitated to make themselves better. David Goggins’s story is extraordinary because he chose to do extraordinary things to make significant changes in his life. He committed to make a change and followed through.
The ordinary thing for him would be to accept the status quo, to accept that abuse and neglect are just part of your life and something you cannot avoid. The ordinary thing would be for Goggins to continue eating and living in a way that would keep him obese and lazy. But Goggins chose something different. Rich Roll chose something different too.
For both Roll and Goggins, physical activity and exertion beyond what they initially thought possible was a key to their success. They pushed themselves to do something that was out of the norm, particularly for them at the time. Over time, each of them became ultramarathon runners—as if 26.2 miles were not enough—who run 50+ miles, often in addition to 90+ mile bike rides and a 6-mile swim for many competitions. These are serious men with serious physical stamina.
But neither of them got there overnight. Rich Roll started training because he would get winded climbing the stairs in his house. David Goggins was overweight and had to lose more than 100 lbs. to even start training as a Navy Seal. The key to their success was their mental fortitude that allowed them to continue pushing themselves past their own perceived limits and achieve something great.
Roll and Goggins are certainly inspirational, and I recommend their books, but there are other stories that are just as inspirational throughout the world of sports. That is the nature of sports. Sports have the power to shape and inspire more than the participants themselves.
In the recent Olympics, there were many inspiring stories—like Katie Ledecky, who is 27 years old, but has not lost the 800-meter freestyle event in competition since she was 15. But there is a whole other set of inspiring stories being told during the Paralympic Games in Paris as well.
Talk about overcoming adversity. Athletes in the Paralympic Games must have some kind of disability that renders them impaired for the sport in which they compete. And they certainly compete.
I was intrigued by a story I saw shortly before the Olympics of a Paralympic athlete labeled the “world’s fastest blind sprinter.” David Brown’s story as a blind sprinter is remarkable for a few reasons. First, he was not always blind. Brown has Kawasaki Disease, a degenerative condition that rendered him blind by the time he was 13. He knew what it was not to have a disability and to play sports and run around. A couple of years before his vision was completely gone, Brown enrolled in a school for the blind and began running on the track team. His coach saw Brown’s natural ability and gave him every opportunity to excel.
His coach at the school for the blind was the first person to help Brown progress as an athlete. But running in serious competition while blind is not possible without a guide, which leads to the second point: Brown needed others to help him.
It’s a humbling thing to accept help, particularly when you are elite in your own field. But the elite athletes who have a sense of reality always acknowledge that even in an individual sport, they have a team that helped them get there. There are doctors, physical trainers, nutritionists, strength coaches, and others who all worked to push that athlete to his limits and help him achieve what he did.
Brown understood his own limitations and focused on finding the right guide who could grow with him as he progressed. That person was Jerome Avery.
Avery is a serious athlete in his own right, having run track in college and competed in Olympic qualifying. The fact that Avery would stop pursuing his own athletic goals to be a guide for another person is an inspiring story in itself, and one worth learning more about. What is particularly interesting to me is how Brown and Avery describe their relationship and how they come to know each other’s style so well that they seem to run as one person. They have mastered the art of teamwork in sprinting—a sport not usually associated with the term.
While some athletes like David Brown have guides, others have coaches, caddies, or even arch-rivals who spur them on to greater achievements.
Arguably the best sports book ever written, and certainly my favorite, is John McPhee’s Levels of the Game. The book tells the story of Arthur Ashe and his long-time rival, Clark Graebner, and their semifinal battle in the 1968 U.S. Open. That was not the first meeting for the two 25-year old tennis players. The first meeting came half a lifetime before when they were up-and-coming youth players. The book is arranged around their semifinal match, but weaves seamlessly back and forth between points during the match and stories from their lives. (It is a masterful story about sports, but it’s also a model for aspiring writers learning about narrative structure.)
What McPhee captures so well is how different strands of Ashe and Graebner’s lives led to this one encounter. In a sense, their tennis careers to that point had been leading to this one meeting. And though they had different styles, they matched up well. In Levels of the Game, you get a sense that there was nothing for Ashe and Graebner beyond the game itself. Ashe was an amateur at the time, so he was not chasing money. He was there as part of a quest to perfect his craft.
It reminded me of another athlete I’ve written about before, Oscar Charleston. As his biographer notes in Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player, “Charleston allowed nothing and no one to get in the way of the pursuit of his craft, which he brought as close to perfection as anyone ever has. The perfection was its own reward. It had to be.” (25) Charleston did not receive the financial benefits that Major League players received, and, like other Negro League players, was not even recognized by many baseball historians. (Only recently have the Negro League players like Charleston been recognized in official baseball statistics for their achievements.)
But what happens when it seems impossible to reach your potential? What does an athlete do when their career does not meet expectations or the pursuit of one’s craft stalls out?
When he was an 18-year old amateur, Aaron Baddeley won the Australian Open in 1999—and repeated the feat following year. Commentators quickly labeled him “the next Tiger Woods.” Yet Baddeley has struggled throughout his career. He has won, for sure, but he has never reached the heights of the sport that he or others had in mind.
Some athletes may crumble when that happens. It is hard to work week in and week out for a goal that never comes. But some people learn from their struggles and come out better on the other side.
For instance, after Baddeley went into the last round of the 2007 US Open with a two-stroke lead, a disappointing final round of 80 (while paired with the winner, Tiger Woods) left him tied for 13th. He said to Golf Digest afterward:
“Character has been built in me,” he says. “I can handle what happened to me at Oakmont in a way I wouldn’t have been able to four or five years ago. I was much weaker then, but the hard times taught me to stand strong in tough situations. As the Bible says, be of good courage; do not give up. That’s what a champion does.”
A champion also, apparently, caddies for his kids. I saw Aaron Baddeley this past spring a few times when our kids were playing in golf tournaments with the same organization. I remember walking onto the range and getting my daughter’s bag set up only to see a guy with long hair a few slots down. I thought it was Baddeley, but did not know. Then I heard him speak and the accent confirmed my thoughts. I told my daughter, “Now you can say you warmed up next to a tour pro.”
Having known a bit of Baddeley’s story—we’re the same age, so I’ve paid attention to him through the years—I was thinking how amazing it would be for his own boys to learn about golf from a man who had personally experienced the highs and lows of competition before. Baddeley was the exact kind of person you would want by your side, guiding you, tweaking things, and doing what tour pros do.
Yet on that day, and the other tournaments where I saw him, Baddeley was not a tour pro. He was just another dad caddying for his junior golfer son. And whether or not Baddeley makes a comeback on Tour, he has found one of the best aspects of sports, which is its ability to make connections and bring people together.
One of the most enjoyable things I do is to play golf with my kids. It’s a privileged time to be together without other distractions. We get frustrated, learn from our mistakes, and work on our mental game. But the best part is just being together. Those shared experiences are something I’ll treasure.
A fun book to read on these connections, and specifically how we can influence our kids, is Fathers, Daughters, and Sports, a compilation of stories and essays by a wide variety of people. Throughout all the entertaining stories, it becomes clear that for most people, sports are not ends in themselves. Rather, they are the means to connection and shared experiences and something profound. Sports can bring people together in a way that other shared activities do not.
We do not need to completely overhaul our lives like Rich Roll or David Goggins to benefit from the power of sports. Whether it’s a company softball team, a pickup basketball game, watching our kid’s volleyball game, or participating in a semi-pro competition, sports teach us a lot about humility, discipline, relationships, and, in the end, what really matters in life.
Remember to turn every page. Enjoy your weekend. Please let me know whether you need anything.
Best,
Aaron