Damian Hughes

There was that one line that when I scribbled my notes after the interview, there's that one line that Chrissie shared with us that I still go back to was like, I raised the imperfect race perfectly.

You know, and I think that's something that when we talk about pressure, things are not going to go to plan.

They're not going to go perfectly.

It's how you respond to that is responding perfectly to imperfections that I think is a really interesting concept.

Yeah, very much.

Well, Ruvik McElroy gave a brilliant interview after he won the Masters a couple of weeks ago where he went, I'm just in love with the process, not the outcome.

You know, I've learned to fall in love with that.

But there's something else that is called by psychologists obstacle inoculation.

that as part of the process you can introduce it, which is introduce moments of chaos, moments of things going wrong, moments where obstacles are put in your way and you observe how you do it.

I mean, do you remember when we spoke to Mel Marshall, Adam Peaty's coach, and she said that that's what she did with Adam, where she made him dive into a pool that was full of moss on the front and they had to climb over the fence to get into the swimming pool.

And it was all...

Dealing with those imperfections perfectly.

Equipped him that when he went to the Rio Olympics and he had his kit nicked, he was able just to handle it with grace.

Yeah, exactly.

Like your brain is a pattern spotting machine.

So if you've not built in that there's a pattern that things might go wrong, it panics.

It gives you the risk of freezing in those key moments, whereas your ability just to inoculate yourself against it is something that any of us can do, whatever our pressure moment that we're facing.

Did you not message him recently about that?

Yeah, I messaged his dad, Andy, and he came back and said he was going in for another operation, but he's really keen to come back.

I'd love that.