Callum, (my 11-year-old son) and I had fallen out during the holidays, because he was just being one of those spoilt, entitled children, which drive you nuts.
Without getting too mad or raising my voice I told him we were going out on a bike ride, and so we went to the garage to get our bikes out and started riding to I don’t know where.
Callum was angry with me, so he rode away ahead, in fact he rode his bike the best I’ve ever seen him ride, it was kind of hard for me to keep up on the mountain bike with him on a road bike, I had to shout in front to tell him which way to turn. As usually happens with these things though, he was sorry pretty quick and so was I. So, we stopped at a new café about a few miles from home for an ice cream and a drink.
On the way to the café though, we passed a park, which is a brand new skate park, that’s just been built. I wanted us to go back and sit and watch the guys skateboarding, because I love to see things like this, I love to watch talented people work and it was brand new and I thought it was really cool. So that’s what we did and we talked about practice and purposeful practice and how you might get good at skateboarding and how that’s the same as everything else. Then we saw the boy, it’s hard to age him but, he doesn’t look much older than 5 or 6 years old. He was on a scooter, as boys do on skateboard parks with all the big boys doing massive tricks around him, he wanted to go from one side of the big half pipe up the other side on his scooter.
It was never going to work.
So, I watched the first time he did It, (I was too far away to intervene anyway, and I didn’t know where his parents were) he went down one side of the half pipe and half way up the other.
He got no-where near the top of the other half pipe, he lost his scooter and fell on to his hands and slid down the side of the concrete half pipe on his knees; (he had shorts on) he just laid there for perhaps 10 seconds and nobody paid any attention and I thought I was going to have to see if he was okay, until he got up.
His scooter had landed on top of the half pipe with its momentum, so he looked and tried to figure out a way to try and get it. He walked around, climbed up the other side and retrieved it and I knew he was going to try find his parents, because he had hurt himself and was holding in the tears like boys do until he sees his mum or dad.
But I was wrong. He went straight back to the other side of the half pipe again and tried again- same result.
I said to Callum, “he’ll be done this time” he was not getting up from that one, but he did, collected his scooter the same way and went back to the top of the pipe, 3rd time lucky. Nailed it!
The thing I was most delighted about, was that Callum realised he has seen something quite special happen and I don’t know if it will rub off on him, but it certainly rubbed off on me.
I said to Callum, “that’s a champion right there, what ever he decides to do he will be good at”
I was reminded just for a minute, by quite a famous quote from David Brailsford when he was at the peak of his powers with British Cycling “we don’t turn cyclists in to winners, we find winners and turn them in to cyclists”
Blog Post Number - 1989