A friend asked me last week: “If you could start over at five years old and try to make it as a footballer, could you do it?” My immediate response was: “Definitely not.” But how much is athletic or sporting success down to talent and how much is it the result of hard work? Sam Feeney, Stockholm
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
Without talent, you’re wasting your time. Without hard work, you’re wasting your talent. samwisehere
Put simplistically, to make a relatively decent living as a professional player, hard work will trump talent (if the player starts with a modicum of talent). If you want to be selected for a national team, talent will be the deciding factor (although you will still need to be willing and able to do a hell of a lot of hard work).
In general, in order to become quite good at something, working hard is the most important factor, but you won’t reach the top – in those endeavours where class, or money, or looks, or luck can’t secure you a top position – without a huge amount of talent. Jantar
Successful sportspeople (and, incidentally, musicians) I’ve known have an innate ability for hard work – that capacity to spend countless hours refining a tiny detail of technique, or improving fitness by a small increment, in order to achieve the significant end goal they have in mind. Which strikes me as being part of their talent. 17Luftballons
Opportunity matters as well. You could be the world’s greatest player of X sport, but because you never tried, or your parents couldn’t afford lessons, you never made it. YorkshireExPat
I played with two lads who went on to make it in football – one of them ended up in the Premier League for a decade and played for their country. At the age I played with them, around 13 to 16, they were clearly in with a chance, but they were also miles behind the best player in the team. This player was on the books at our local side, who at the time were in the Championship, but his dad was rarely able to ferry him to and from training sessions. The club tried to help, but without parental support the player drifted away and is, from what I last heard, completely out of the game. It just goes to show that talent isn’t simply enough. pearcesleftfoot
Not sure it’s hard work as much as an obsessive need to practise and get better. The outcome is the same – thousands of hours spent on repetitive drills – but to be the very best you have to be able to analyse each drill and work out how to do it better next time, and then how to do it perfectly without having to think about it. The best sports people also have an ability to live in and relish key moments without crumbling under pressure. The North Americans call it “clutch”. ShakeyDave
One of my sons is a professional athlete and another one had the talent, but went a different path and is happy he did so. There are way more factors than just talent and hard work. When they are younger it takes:
luck that the sport they are good at is available to try out, either through the hundreds of volunteers who run football, running, rugby clubs etc, or because their parents have the money to pay;
parent/grandparent/mentor commitment to get them where they need to be for practice. There is so much running around, so often a car is essential, too, and money to fund petrol and trips;
parents/mentors who understand their role as support/bank accounts/huggers – parents should not do anything other than be the safe haven;
a love of competing;
an ability to deal with highs and lows and use the lows to look at what went wrong and what they could do better;
the maturity to chip away, day in and day out. It is a drudge;
sacrificing a social life;
supportive coaches who see something in the athlete. This can be very subjective;
good teammates. They are also often your competitors, so it’s a fine balance;
the physical attributes for their sport. There are always exceptions, of course, but a 5ft-tall man will not be a 50-metre freestyle Olympian;
the ability to cope with spectator heckling;
sleep and recovery;
not being injury prone.
The list is endless. Both my sons were talented in their sports, but the one who walked away found the stress of competing too much. But he used his drive in an education/work environment and has picked up another sport that he does for enjoyment that still needs focus but is way less pressured. My other son is enjoying the opportunities, but is already planning for when he can no longer do it. I think that is healthy. lizzyvs
I don’t have an answer, but I have an anecdote. I’m 43. I never did any running until I was 40. I was a deeply unsporty child who became an overweight twentysomething and then an obese thirtysomething. Sport and exercise were things that other people did. Anyway, I was heading towards my 40th birthday and I decided I didn’t want to be obese any more. I hated how it felt and I hated how I looked. So, I started watching what I ate and took up running. I was terrible at it. When I “finished” Couch to 5k, my 5k time was 45 minutes.
The pandemic arrived and I ran more and more. I needed to. I was losing my mind with the pressure of the pandemic. I ran and ran. Sprinting. Hill sprints. 10ks. I got faster and faster, fitter and fitter. By then, I was 6st (38kg) lighter. At 43, only a few months ago, I ran my first marathon. Did it in four hours. So, I’m a runner now. A good one, actually, for my age and inexperience.
But … was I always a runner? If I’d known, I could have run a three-hour marathon in my 20s. Or better. So then, I think, what if I’d got into running in my teens? The human body, in its nature, is a lean and sporty machine. All it takes is time and repetition. MonsieurBrightside
Even if you want to believe that “God-given talent” exists, is it not more beneficial to “control the controllables”: to encourage effort over ability; to seek to create environments that aim to improve a child’s capabilities regardless of how much “natural talent” the coach estimates they may inherently possess? This can empower a child to believe that they can and will improve their skill sets. The primary function of coaches and teachers is to provide them with the opportunities, the right conditions, the motivation and help them to focus. Doing so will widen their horizons, engender self-respect and improve their physical and mental wellbeing. If we want to produce such worthy outcomes in all our children, the T-word has no part to play in this endeavour. Craig Howieson, former table tennis player and three-time Commonwealth Games athlete
