When the Olympics were held in Mexico City, there was a young swimmer who had hopes of winning several gold medals. He failed to live up to his high expectations. So he went home and began a more intensive training program than he ever thought was possible. When the contests were held in Munich in 1972, the whole world was thrilled by the unbelievable series of record-breaking swimming events won by Mark Spitz, who went home with more gold medals than any individual had ever won in Olympic competition. It was the same young man!

There has probably never been a lesson pounded home with such force as this: You cannot excel in sports unless you exercise self-control in order to put your body in first-class physical condition. Every coach tries to instill this thought in the minds of the athletes he works with. He can set rules about getting enough sleep and the proper diet, but a coach cannot possibly oversee every minute of a person’s life. Any would-be-athlete has to exercise self-control and cannot depend on the coach to supervise every detail of his life. Yet in spite of what should be common knowledge to all of us, there are great numbers of athletes who operate on the assumption that they will somehow be the one and only exception to that rule.