Inside the Ski Racing Mind: Do You Want a Gifted or Hard-working Ski Racer?

Giftedness is revered in our culture; inborn talent—whether intellectual, athletic, or artistic—ensures that children will be successful. How many times have you heard “Bode Miller was born to ski race” or “Lindsay Vonn was destined to greatness?” Well, let me clear something up: No one is born to do anything, certainly not to ski race. The only thing that can be reasonably said is that some children are born with certain physiological attributes (e.g., body type) that can help them excel at ski racing. However, giftedness is no guarantee of success; the ski-racing world is full of gifted failures. Yet so many parents hope beyond hope that their children are gifted (and, by the way, 80% of parents surveyed believe their children are above average which, of course, is statistically impossible).

Children have also fallen for this myth of giftedness. Whenever I speak to young ski racers, I ask them whether they would rather be gifted or hardworking. With almost complete unanimity, children say they would rather be gifted. When you’re gifted, they say, everything is easy. Yet parents and young racers don’t realize that giftedness can be as much a cross to bear as, well, a gift.

Though I don’t admit it to them, I would probably have to say that it is better to be gifted, because you can develop the hard work, whereas you can’t be hard working and develop the giftedness. But it doesn’t really matter because you have the ability you are born with and the only thing you can control is how hard you work.

Problems with Giftedness

Because gifted children succeed at an early age with little effort, they often have no ownership of their successes (“I won the race, but I didn’t even try.”). Without ownership, gifted children have difficulty learning the connection between their efforts and their outcomes. They can’t say, “I did well because I worked hard.” They may also develop the belief that they will always succeed in the future without effort.

Another problem with being labeled as gifted is that natural ability is not something that children can control. Gifted children don’t earn their giftedness; they were just lucky that their parents gave them good genes. Also, when gifted children succeed, they, of course, attribute their success to their ability. Unfortunately, when they fail—which they inevitably will sooner or later—they tend to attribute their failures to their lack of ability and, as I just noted, there’s nothing they can do about it.

Challenges of Being Gifted

Because they’re gifted, these children experience early success and little or no failure. These young racers win JOs ,qualify for Topolino, and are on the fast track to the U.S. Ski Team. But sooner or later they reach a level where everyone is gifted (e.g., the USST). At this point, giftedness isn’t what makes these children special, because they’re all gifted. And their giftedness isn’t what ultimately determines who becomes truly successful. What separates those children who are simply gifted from those who are gifted and successful is whether they developed the skills to maximize their gifts.

Unfortunately, these children will find that their inborn talent is no longer sufficient to be successful. Because everything comes so easily to them, many never learn the skills—hard work, persistence, patience, perseverance, discipline—that will enable them to become truly successful. Also, at some point, gifted children do something that they’ve never done before—they fail—and this can be a traumatic experience. Because they have never failed before, they didn’t develop the tools to respond positively to failure. It is common for gifted children to either quit or start to underachieve when first faced with failure.

Redefining Giftedness

The value of giftedness—or the harm it causes—depends on how you and your children look at it. If you and they buy into our culture’s view of giftedness (i.e., a free pass to success), then, yes, I believe that giftedness will be as much of a burden as a boon. At the same time, giftedness can be a wonderful opportunity for children to accomplish great things.
Here’s what I recommend. If you think your young racer may be gifted, have them assessed by impartial experts—parents are notoriously poor judges of their children’s capabilities. If your children truly are gifted, don’t tell them. There’s no point. Labeling children as gifted places unnecessary pressure on them. And whether gifted or not, there’s nothing they can do about it anyway. If they find out they’re gifted, tell them that they’re fortunate to have this talent, but it’s only a starting point. Whether it is ever fully realized is entirely up to them.

Erase Giftedness From Your Vocabulary

Instead of emphasizing your children’s giftedness (“You are such a talented ski racer”), you should talk to them about the attitudes and skills that under their control and that they will need to fully realize their talents (“You worked really hard in preparing for that race”). Gifted young racers will only achieve true success if they have a passion for the sport, choose to pursue their talent, develop the skills necessary to maximize their gifts, and make every effort to maximize their abilities. If your children aren’t gifted, that’s fine too, because they may have talents that haven’t yet been discovered and, if they learn the right skills, they can still do their best and become pretty darned successful.

Potential Is a Pipe Dream

Another word that is closely linked to giftedness is potential. I regularly hear parents and coaches saying, “She has unlimited potential.” But, as a basketball coach once said, “All potential means is that you haven’t done a darned thing yet.” When children are labeled as having potential, they’re being told that they have something that they might not have and are being saddled with an expectation that they may not be able to fulfill. Saying children have potential is saying that we can predict who will become successful with great certainty. Yet we’re lousy at predicting who becomes successful in ski racing, others sports, school, the arts, or any other achievement area.

Think of all of the “can’t miss” kids who missed. For example, National Football League teams spend tens of millions of dollars each year trying to identify which college players will become superstars, yet these efforts often go for naught. I have two names for you: Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell. Both were number-one draft picks who seemed destined to be superstars. Yet, both have been busts.

I recommend that you erase the word potential from your vocabulary as well. Instead, I use the phrase “fully realize their ability.” This means that whatever ability your children were born with—and no one knows how much ability any child has—the goal is to help them do everything they can to fully realize that ability.

It’s about Hard Work

Contrary to what many parents think, giftedness is actually overrated as a contributor to success. Dr. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, has studied expert performance in sports, music, mathematics, and other activities for more than 30 years. He found that so-called innate ability was unnecessary to predict who would become most successful. The single greatest predictor of who would be become successful was how many hours they devoted to the activity and the quality of their practice. In a nutshell, the more they practiced, the better they were. Focusing on hard work will teach your children essential life skills—persistence, patience, perseverance, discipline, time management, and how to overcome obst
acles, setbacks, frustration, and failure—that will enable them to fully realize their ability.

A Concluding Example: Successful, But Not Gifted

I used to work with a junior race program in Colorado. There was one athlete on the team, I’ll call him Rick, who was really terrible. Everyone knew it, including Rick himself. Yet Rick was my poster child for the value of hard work. He was the first one at training in the morning and the last one off the hill at the end of the day. Rick put in more time in the weight room, took care of his equipment better, and watched videos, read about, and talked to coaches about ski racing more than any other athlete on the team. At races, Rick was consistently one of the worst finishers on the team. He was never going to be a good ski racer. Most people would call him a loser. “What a waste of time for Rick,” they would say, “Why do something that you stink at?” Can you imagine working so hard and never seeing tangible results from your efforts? Thankfully, Rick was raised with a different perspective on his ski racing participation. He didn’t care about results. He just loved to ski race.

Though Rick was never going to have ski racing success, he was learning essential life skills that would serve him well later in life. Sooner or later, Rick was going to find something for which he had an aptitude and, combined with these life skills, he was going to be incredibly successful. After high school, Rick went to a good college, applied everything he learned from his ski racing to his academics, did extremely well, and is currently finishing medical school with an eye on a career in sports medicine. Rick, who was the antithesis of gifted in his sport, is what I call a success in every sense of the word.

Dr. Jim Taylor drjimtaylor.com,
knows the psychology of ski racing! He competed internationally for
Burke Mtn. Academy, Middlebury College, and the University of Colorado.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Jim has worked with many of America’s leading
junior race programs as well as World Cup competitors from many
countries. He is the author ofPrime Ski Racing Triumph of the Racer’s Mind. Dr. Jim is also the author of two parenting books and speaks regularly to parents, students, and educators around the U.S..

Jim Taylor, Ph.D., competed internationally while skiing for Burke Mountain Academy, Middlebury College, and the University of Colorado. He currently serves as a consultant to the U.S. Ski Team Europa Cup and D teams as well as the FIS women's NTG. Over the last 30 years, he has worked with the Japanese Ski Teams, many World Cup and Olympic racers, and most of the leading junior race programs in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of Prime Ski Racing: Triumph of the Racer’s Mind. To learn more or to contact Jim, visit drjimtaylor.com.