To jump over 6m, one is undoubtedly an athlete in perfect harmony with his art and a professional at heart.
Like artists, athletes create with their body and their performance. It usually emanates from a deep desire which comes from a need and lack of something. And from the desire sprouts the idea.
Ideas do not come on their own. Then athletes, like artists, work on their ideas to shape their desires. What they usually want, is to tell a story and first and foremost, to re-live an emotion – perhaps related to an early influence, exposure or hero. Or perhaps related to some available equipment – a guitar, a paintbrush or a pole which, in the latter’s case, is working wonders for the young pole vaulter, Mondo du Plantis who has recently broken the world record on several occasions.
One may also have emotions created by a fertile imagination. Irrespective of its source, these emotions lead us to dig deeper in search of the truth because what we see around us is reality, not the truth.
Reality, like words, is only the engine of things. Saying ‘I love you’ can mean all sorts of things depending on the circumstances, the characters involved and the environment. Language alone is not sufficient. However, as we progress in our thoughts, we usually reach a point where we move from a position of contemplation to one of action, analysing to creating.
Continuous analysis feeds creativity. Through daily training and craft, their ceaseless envy to better themselves to progress and produce something that is closer to their goals, artists and athletes are in fact trying to make sense of things.
Athletes are realistic about what they do and what they can achieve. And in being realistic, they sustain the emotion. The alternative would be to live in fantasy. Athletes do not, as this would cause them to lose interest in their endeavours.
That is why they can live with and accept themselves as they are – with their talents and short-comings, strengths and weaknesses, success and failures. They fall, recover and continue in a loop.
When athletes are at work, they are digging and searching for something that is very personal. Hence, athletes are often loners because one needs solitude to create.
In their bubble, when they are training, performing or recovering, they search for that need to harness the necessary courage and strength to continue and progress towards their targets. Athletes and artists have good ideas and do set clear objectives.
But the sooner they start to work and train, they often get disappointed and deceived. Hence the need for them to fight continuously against the degradation of their original idea. This is where vision, hard work, perseverance and determination invite themselves in.
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A good reason why, in spite of all the technology, machines will never be able to be great athletes is because machines do not need or miss anything as compared to us.
We are constantly searching for who we are. And what is life all about. Yet, athletes are rarely discouraged or disturbed by this permanent uncertainly and by their frequent failures which become routine. It is because athletes are fully involved and absorbed in the action of continuously pushing their limits.
Just like poets writing poetry to unlock the truth as truth is hidden, while reality is in front of us. Athletes work very hard to find the truth. Through their work and performance, they strive to express something which is very personal, deeper and beyond their achievements. No sooner, they reach their target, their PB or break a record that they almost immediately renew their desire, their interest and the need for that something which is still missing. Yet, at the end, they do the same thing again because their work is never complete. We all turn around and around, dig and dig and perhaps discover at the end of it all, a little bit more of the truth on ourselves and on things.
The same with Western movies which do not only speak of cowboys and Indians but of many other things such as treachery, infidelity, courage, quest, resolve, generosity and dignity – a certain truth which comes though only at the end.
After all, athletes can only be totally sincere in what they do and to do it to the best of their capabilities. So, to ask athletes what they really want, trying to achieve, why they train hard and what they really want to do, is the worst question to ask them – because in the end, all that athletes are searching for, is to be appreciated and loved.
Athletes most certainly deserve it. Because world records never cease to improve and athletes need to train more. To be an elite athlete nowadays requires a massive amount of effort. Any pole vaulter, for example, who is jumping over 6m is undoubtedly an athlete in perfect harmony with his art and a professional at heart.
There are no miracle recipes. And through these uplifting and inspiring achievements, athletes do receive something which allow them to feel and discover some truths about themselves. May it always be happy and self-fulfilling discoveries.
• Complied by M70 world masters pole vault champion Jean-Michel de Senneville.
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