Being a champion in any sport takes more than just talent

I’m H&H’s dressage editor, but I want to talk briefly about tennis. Please bear with me.

Alongside the live stream from Wellington International Festival of Dressage, I spent last Sunday afternoon watching Serbia’s Novak Djokovic claim a record 23rd men’s singles grand slam victory with triumph over Norway’s Casper Ruud in the final of the French Open.

As Novak walked onto court, knowing he had a chance to make history, I wondered how confident he felt. Reasonably confident, clearly – after it was done, his team handed him a jacket already embroidered with the number 23 in readiness for the moment.

But on his way to wearing that jacket, Novak had to put in over three hours of toil on the hot, dusty clay court. Casper did not make it easy for him, especially in the opening set, but ultimately, when it came down to it, Novak did what he has done so many times before – played a masterful match, and got it right more than he got it wrong.

Closer to home, Charlotte Dujardin was doing something similar at Wellington. Over three sizzling days, she clocked up six wins from prix st georges to grand prix with four horses – a whitewash of the kind she has produced so many times before.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, another dressage Queen, reigning Olympic champion Jessica von Bredow-Werndl, was reclaiming the German national dressage championship title for the third time with TSF Dalera BB.

But here was a difference. Much like Novak’s French Open final, Jessica’s national title campaign didn’t get off to the the start she’d hoped, and she finished second behind Sönke Rothenberger and Fendi in the opening round, the grand prix.

I was struck by her comments on social media that evening, and it brought home an important reality of what it takes to consistently win at this level.

“‘You always win’ – how this sentence has annoyed me again and again,” Jessica said. “No – it’s not that simple. It is always work and training to have everything together here and now. And I didn’t have that today.”

Jessica explained she “started the two-time changes far too early and unprepared”, and it resulted in an average score of 3.2 from the judges.

“But now to the positive,” she added. “Dalera felt sensationally good while warming up and then also in the test. So fresh, so athletic, so motivated and light-footed. And that is the most important.”

It’s a lesson to all competitors to own your mistakes, and work out where it went wrong so that you can learn from them – but also not to forget to focus on the positives and feel proud of what went well. It clearly worked for Jessica – she returned to the top of the leaderboard the following day in the grand prix special, before winning the freestyle with 90.07%, and with it, the overall national title.

And it’s also a valuable reminder that, no matter how successful a rider or any other sportsperson may be, no victory is automatic.

Those who enjoy win after win are those who, as Jessica says, consistently put in enough work and training to get everything right on the day, and who can do that over and over again. But no athlete, not even an Olympic champion or Novak Djokovic, can get it right every single time. If they did, Novak would have never lost a match and instead celebrated a record number of grand slam titles back in 2015 at the US Open.

‘Being a champion means never taking winning for granted’

Of course, you can’t directly compare tennis to dressage. In tennis, it’s about you, out there alone on court for hours at a time. There’s no living, breathing sporting partner who can both disrupt your careful execution, and save you from your mistakes. Your tennis racket might prove not to be up to the job, sure, but you can just whip out a new one.

But in tennis, as in dressage, it’s striking how certain names have dominated the sport for years, returning season after season to claim title after title. Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams – much like Isabell Werth, Charlotte Dujardin, Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and Lottie Fry.

And these eight remarkable athletes all have something crucial in common. I don’t mean their talent – although of course they all have that in bucketloads. I mean their ability to show up when it counts, to learn from their mistakes, and to get it right more than they get it wrong.

Showing up when it counts includes never neglecting the small things; always taking time to set up a serve, even when the crowd are hustling you to get the job done, or preparing a horse for a perfect pirouette by riding an equally perfect corner.

It’s about viewing the entire test or match as a process – aiming to win every point, but not letting one doomed game or movement affect the next.

And it’s about never, ever, assuming you will win – even if everybody else does.

Because that’s the thing. When you watch Charlotte or Jessica riding into an arena, you may assume she will win, but she doesn’t make that assumption. She knows she can win, but she knows how much she has to do first in order to make it a reality. And the reason that time after time, we are proved right, and Charlotte and Jessica end up on the podium? Because they ride into that arena, and they do everything they need to get there, often more.

And just as Novak walked onto court knowing that the record was his to claim, that an embroidered jacket was waiting for him up in the player’s box, he also knew that he would only wear it to bed that night* if he could produce his very best tennis that afternoon.

Being a champion isn’t just about being the most talented. It’s about having the dedication and the ability to produce your best performance at the exact moment it matters, time after time, and never taking success for granted.

And that’s something we can all do well to remember, whether it’s as spectators or competitors, in any sport, at any level.

*speculation based purely on the fact that if I had earned a jacket declaring me the best in the world, I’d probably never take it off again.

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