Mind over matter and opting in to tackle the fear factor

Picture this. You’re 1,371 metres above sea-level, perched in a little wooden hut looking out over Italy, mountains in all directions. There’s a little bit of a breeze, feels like there might be rain on the way. That would be unhelpful, but equally problematic is the bright sunshine that’s just burst through.

If that carries on, when you cut down into the forest, the roots you’re traversing will be harder to see, meaning you’re more likely to crash. Which would be a problem, given that you’re flying down on nothing more than a specialist bike, travelling at top speeds of over 60 kilometres per hour.

Many of your fellow riders have suffered injuries in similar situations. In fact, one of your heroes broke his back racing this course last year. He has returned and is again racing against you today.

Today you’re a teenager called Jackson Goldstone, and you’re about to win your first ever elite downhill mountain biking race. The route you’re taking on is called the Black Snake, and fellow riders say it’s the scariest course on the professional circuit.

The reaction most people would have to this scenario is terror. And fear is something that many athletes in extreme sports are believed to feel less than you or me.

Take Alex Honnold, the world’s most famous climber, whose fear centres have been analysed in brain scans and have been found to be dormant.

You may have seen him in the documentary Free Solo, where he became the first person to climb the 914m of El Capitan in Yosemite without ropes, and where merely watching him consider the face he’s about to take on certainly fired everyone else’s brains’ fear centres.

But he is atypical. And it’s not just in action sports where fear is inevitable. What about Ben Stokes coming in at 45 for four in the second Test of the Ashes, knowing his captaincy was on the ropes.

Or Andy Murray facing Novak Djokovic over the net in the 2013 Wimbledon final and contending with the idea that this might be his one, greatest chance to end the 77-year wait? Or 36-year-old Murray today, with metal in his hip but still going, still believing, just about.

Or for that matter Emma Raducanu sauntering out onto Arthur Ashe Stadium two years ago to face Leylah Fernandez and win her first major at just 18 years old. Instinctively you think that she was so young as to be fearless – but we remember how she struggled in her first grand slam, where breathing difficulties forced her out of Wimbledon’s last 16.

In sport, there seem to be two broad categories when it comes to dealing with fear. You have the learned muscle memory of Stokes, who knows that he hit those runs at Headingley in 2019, and in the World Cup final, so can bank that.

No matter what happens next, he can always draw on those moments – in some ways he doesn’t need to prove anything, it is possible.

Or you have the Raducanu and Goldstone confidence of what might be. The former seems more reliable, the latter boundless.

Dr Nate Zinsser who works with top sportspeople and the US Army trains his charges to picture in detail the best outcome possible in any given contest, and then build on that.

With such an approach, the benefit is that you don’t need to actually have hit those super-over-forcing runs to know what it would feel like. And to know that you can.

My big fear is parties. Getting ready to head out I imagine the gaffes I’ll make, the Bridget-Jones-misread of the dress code, or the population of terrifying guests. And nearly every time it’s absolutely fine. And every next time I forget that.

Many of us make the mistake of remembering only our failings and retelling ourselves the reasons why we should limit what we try.

So when we sit back to watch Wimbledon, the Ashes or the Tour de France this week, rather than tutting at the dropped catches or the missed volleys, perhaps we can remember these guys are in the arena, choosing to chase their fears away.

And that’s something we can all benefit from remembering to do too.

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