2 Resilience in action: resilient athletes

So far, you have looked at research relating to elite athletes, but the findings can be applied to other contexts, as you will see in Activity 3.

Activity 3 Resilient athletes

Timing: Allow approximately 30 minutes

First, watch the video ‘The Merthyr mermaid’ which follows Cath Pendleton completing some incredible feats, arguably demonstrating high levels of resilience.

Download this video clip.Video player: The Merthyr mermaid

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Transcript: The Merthyr mermaid

CATH PENDLETON:

I’m Cath Pendleton. And believe it or not, I’m going to swim a mile in the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica. Most people would die of hypothermia after 15 minutes in these waters. I’d be in there for at least 35.

WOMAN

Some people do yoga to sort of get to their moment and have their happy place and sort of reset and calm down. And for her, hers is just going in the water.

CATH PENDLETON

I got completely hooked. I was swimming four or five times a week.

WOMAN

She just sort of turned around one day and was like, you know what? I’m going to book in for the Channel. And next thing you know, within a year, she’d already swum the Channel.

CATH PENDLETON

And then things got even more crazy. I was selected to represent Great Britain in the World Ice Swimming Championships in Russia and came away with third in my age group.

WOMAN

We were like, you’ve done so well. And she was like, oh, yeah. But it’s the next thing I’ve got to do now.

CATH PENDLETON

I’d been told about this incredible challenge for ice swimmers, to swim one mile in each of the seven continents.

MAN 1

Very few people in the world have the ability to go to those limits. You’d have to be the fastest swimmer. You have to be rock-solid in your training.

CATH PENDLETON

And then yeah, the freezer journey began.

Yeah.

I was thinking, if I can’t just sit in this freezer, then I’m going to really struggle. Although I felt I could do it, there was always that element of doubt.

After six days at sea, we had arrived. If the swim was to go ahead here, we would be the first people in the world to swim a mile this far south.

I just knew if I don’t sit still and relax, I’m not going to pass my medical. And then all of a sudden, it was like, OK, you’ve passed.

So it was like, you’re going first. I was like, OK. That’s fine. And then the tide came and off we went. And then it was like, go.

MAN 2

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

 

CATH PENDLETON

So I’m swimming away. And I’d taken on a little bit of water. And I was coughing. And I was thinking, I really need to stop and cough this water out.

But I thought, if I stop, they’ll think I’m in danger. And they’ll stop me. So I’m like, just cough underwater. Get a grip, Cath. Just swim.

I knew I could do it. But every swim is different. Some days, it’s just not your day.

Every time I did sight the boat, it just still seemed so far away. But each time I see people clapping.

MAN 1

Come on, Cath.

CATH PENDLETON

There’s just something in my brain that says, don’t give up. Keep going. Eventually, they were like, you can stop. I was like, yeah.

[CHEERING]

I’ve trained really, really hard. I’ve pushed my body to the limits. And you know what? To be the first, to be able to say you’ve done anything first in the world is just absolutely awesome.

End transcript: The Merthyr mermaid

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The Merthyr mermaid

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Then consider the following:

• Identify an individual athlete, that you know personally or from elite sport, that has demonstrated resilience.
• Why have you chosen this example – can you draw on your developing knowledge of resilience to justify your choice?

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Discussion

You may have found it hard to come up with just one example, as it could be argued that there are a number of athletes that have demonstrated resilience along their journey. Your justification might have considered robust or rebound resilience or you might have reflected on how the athlete demonstrated one or more of the five psychological (protective) factors that were highlighted by Fletcher and Sarkar (2012), and was able to overcome significant challenges.

Athletes are not the only performers in the sporting context, and coaches need to be able to draw on their own resilience to positively evaluate the ‘plethora of stressors’ (Olusoga et al., 2012, p. 230) that they could experience, including preparing for events and managing their own wellbeing (Sarkar and Hilton, 2020). Olusoga et al. (2012) examined factors that coaches perceived as enabling them to coach in stressful environments and identified eleven psychological attributes including focus, confidence, commitment, and support; similar to the five psychological factors highlighted by Fletcher and Sarkar (2012) in their research on athlete resilience.