The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
From crushing defeat can come fantastic victories
MY HEA RT went out to Laura Muir last weekend.
I haven’t met her yet but I knew she was a local girl and had noticed her profile in athletics has been rising pretty quickly over the last couple of months.
I’m sure people in the sport could see the progress she was making but it came as a bit of a surprise to me when she was mentioned as Britain’s best chance of a gold medal at the World Indoor Championships in Poland.
That’s a pretty big weight of expectation for a young runner who is new to that sort of attention.
Unfortunately, she didn’t make it through her heat and you could see how devastated she was afterwards.
She might not think it now, but the experience she’s just gone through could be the best thing to happen to her.
Let’s face it, as big a deal as a World Indoors is, it doesn’t come close to a home Commonwealth Games and all the other major events she’ll hopefully compete in down the years.
Poland might not be a bad place to get an invaluable lesson.
I always feel you have to learn how to lose before you can be a real winner.
Unfortunately, there are more devastating defeats than glorious wins in a career — I can vouch for that.
The important thing is you take things out of those bad days. That’s something I’ve come to realise more as I’ve matured.
My dad, when he was our coach, always stressed and so does Dave Hay now. What you do next is what matters most.
I’m sure Laura’s got good people around her and she’s very lucky to have Eilidh Child there for advice.
To have someone who went to the same school as you as a Team GB team-mate, who has been there and got theT-shirt, must be pretty rare.
The firstWorld Ladies’ Championship in 2007 was an eye-opener for me. It was my first big one as a skip and we didn’t contend at all well all week.
We weren’t a favourite going into it, like Laura was last weekend but there was still a real disappointment when we didn’t perform to our best.
A nd, of course, the Vancouver Olympics four years ago was a real low.
However, I now don’t think we would have won the medal in Sochi had it not been for Vancouver. That’s how important learning from a defeat can be.
Maybe we’ll all be cheering Laura at the top of the podium at Hampden Park in the summer.