Nobody expects athletes to be natural raconteurs, but their message is usually quite simple: it's about 'living the dream'. In other words, we can all achieve our highest ambitions if only we work hard enough and commit deeply enough. This message obviously goes down very big with employers, but it is statistically suspect.
Olympic champions win because others lose. As the ultimate global elite, their supremacy is based on having defeated many other very promising, talented and committed competitors at every level from school sports days to international race meetings. It's fair to suggest that the losers may too have given their all in training, sacrificed every other aspect of their lives, and fixed their eyes unswervingly on the prize. But they lost. They needed to lose for there to be a winner.
Healthy competition is a great thing. So is the will to win. So is the determination to strive for excellence, irrespective of setbacks, handicaps and disadvantages. All these drivers may help us to fulfil our potential - and maybe achieve more than we or our careers advisers ever thought possible. But the higher up the tree we go, the much less likely we are to make it to the next branch. That's how the tree works. Olympic medalists are outliers, black swans, exceptions to the rule. It's nice to think we could be like them but we almost certainly can't and shan't.
Olympians are specialists above all. They operate in a static system where the rules of the game remain pretty much the same, year in and year out. They win through absolute focus on excellence at a single activity over an extended period of time. By contrast, the real world rewards people who are 'good enough' at a task; excellence and perfectionism can be superfluous and inefficient. And the rules are changing all the time. That's why business favours those who have the agility to learn new skills quickly, to cope with changing rules and to solve unfamiliar problems.
Excellence in sport has no purpose beyond itself. Originally, the Olympic disciplines rehearsed useful skills, whether it was lobbing things at enemies or running away from them. In the later Olympian age, the amateur ideal celebrated the fact that running about was fun in its own right. The achievement was truly inspiring, but the commitment was never total. The 1952 Olympics explored how fast a man could run a mile, while training to be a doctor. There was a clear distinction between games (i.e. fun) and work (i.e. work).
The achievements of today's Olympians are more inspiring and admirable than ever, but they surely don't teach us how to live. Their commitment to the game is so absolute and their specialisation so total as to be nearly dysfunctional. That's why there always seems to be something darker behind the tears on the podium. Why are those post-race interviews always so excruciating? It's because there really is nothing more to say.
Simon Russell (pictured) head of communications at Optimal
