Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson on the winner that landed the US the gold medal at the Olympics:
“I’ve done that thousands of times around tires just set out on open ice,” she said, per the BBC. “It’s called ‘Oops, I did it again’ and I’m just thrilled beyond words.“I’ve butchered it a thousand times, ran into tires, tripped over tires just working on my hands. I’m just glad it worked out this time.”
And thats just that one - yes, read that again - one - shot in her whole repertoire of shots, dodges, dribbles...Tried, tested and tried and tested again thousands of times. Through blistered hands, bruised knees, painful days and nights. The one she pulled out of her whole bag and executed it to perfection when it mattered most. Of the tens and thousands of "mental representations"(Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool ) imprinted in her brain with "deliberate practice", having executed it so many times that she could probably pull it off more often than not.
As Malcolm Gladwell puts it - “Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
Good enough to win you gold at the Olympics.
