On the Purpose of Sport

Great article this morning on fasterskier.com about Bill Demong's tumultuous return to the World Cup. Forced to carry the stigma of being the defending Olympic Gold Medalist in Vancouver, Demong spent this summer remodeling his Park City home, and gettin' married to his long time girlfriend, Katie Kocyznski. Instead of plowing through intervals and OD rollerski intervals during July and August, Bill was puttin' up drywall.

Come September, he was back in the full swing of serious training. But the first competitions of the season provided a quick reality check. After placing 32nd, 36th, 45th and 38th in the opening events, Demong returned to Park City to take part in the second tier Continental Cups.

It's his experience with the sport combined with lessons learned from a near career-ending injury back in 2002 that are keeping Bill on track. In fact, it's his off-hill activites and life outside of Nordic Combined that allow him to stay focused, not judging himself on the successes or failures in sport:

“Before that [injury], after a race I’d leave the race course, and if I’d had good result, I was a good person, and if I’d had a bad race, I was a bad person and the time that I spent was wasted – it was really black and white,” he says. “Part of the reason able to improve is that I was able disconnect results as athlete and my self-confidence and my value as a person.”

In other words, to really succeed at your sport, you've got to learn to be more than your sport. Too often is the identity of an ambitious athlete defined by their win and loss record. Given a string of poor performances, injury, or illness, an athlete can quickly lose focus. And it doesn't take long for that sporting identity to be lost as well.

So what's the take home message? Make sure you're in your sport for the right reasons. Use it to make you a better individual. Use it to help you achieve goals and take risks that you otherwise wouldn't. Use it to forge relationships with teammates and coaches. But don't let yourself be tricked into thinking that you and others define yourself by your sport. Diversify yourself, and you'll be surprised at what you'll accomplish along the way!