Back in 2005, when Andy Murray first emerged as a talent in men's tennis, he would walk on to the grass courts of Wimbledon and Queen's Club wearing headphones. Thus the Scotsman stayed oblivious to the noise of an increasingly boosterish crowd, apparently plugged in to some serious listening. We all wondered what. Was he geeing himself up with macho rock? Pounding drum'n'bass? The stirring, battlefield bagpipes of Black Bear? Actually, it turned out Murray was a big fan of sanitised pop-rappers the Black Eyed Peas, and he'd been playing their monotonous hit Let's Get It Started on loop all summer long.
It's difficult to predict what music will motivate sportsmen and women. The masterful Barcelona team, in 2009, somehow won their domestic football league and cup as well as the Champions League while listening to Coldplay before every match. Dame Kelly Holmes trained her way to double Olympic gold in 2004 to the sound of Alicia Keys. Haile Gebrselassie set world records – honestly – on Scatman John. Apparently the 1994 novelty techno track, Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop), had the exact time signature that the Ethiopian athlete needed to pace his 10,000 metre runs.
What are Britain's Olympians and Paralympians listening to in their preparation for next month's Games? How does music feed into their training, their pre-event ritual, their wind-down after success or failure? Do rowers listen to the same stuff as gymnasts, sprinters as long distance runners? Who's content with the random selections of commercial radio – and who couldn't do without their carefully curated playlists? We spoke to seven members of Team GB – a triathlete, a rower, two runners, a long jumper, a basketball player and a gymnast-cum-singer-songwriter – to find out.
